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2021-03-31-accounts

REGISTERED COMPANY NUMBER: 03171880 (England and Wales) REGISTERED CHARITY NUMBER: 1054154

FINANCIAL STATEMENTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

FOR

WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

Bevan Buckland LLP Chartered Accountants And Statutory Auditors Ground Floor Cardigan House Castle Court Swansea Enterprise Park Swansea SA7 9LA

WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

CONTENTS OF THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

Page
Report of the Trustees 1 to 29
Report of the Independent Auditors 30 to 33
Statement of Financial Activities 34
Balance Sheet 35
Cash Flow Statement 36
Notes to the Cash Flow Statement 37
Notes to the Financial Statements 38 to 59

WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

The trustees who are also directors of the charity for the purposes of the Companies Act 2006, present their report with the financial statements of the charity for the year ended 31 March 2021. The trustees have adopted the provisions of Accounting and Reporting by Charities: Statement of Recommended Practice applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102) (effective 1 January 2019).

Reference and administrative information set out on pages one and two form part of this report. The financial statements comply with the Charities Act 2011, the Companies Act 2006, the Memorandum and Articles of Association, and Accounting and Reporting by Charities: Statement of Recommended Practice applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard 102. The board members including the chair, secretary and treasurer are appointed by the board. Each appointment is in accordance with the Women's Aid Memorandum and Articles of Association. Women's Aid is required to have a minimum of three board members and a maximum of 12.

Board members are required to act in the best interests of Women's Aid and for the benefit of the members as a whole. The board is ultimately responsible for all that Women's Aid does. In order for Women's Aid to perform effectively, day-to-day operational management of the charity is delegated to the Chief Executive.

The board has added to its structures for strategic input through a system of subcommittees, which include board members and relevant staff, and to which are appointed external committee members from member organisations and other experts. These subcommittee members act in an advisory capacity only, but support and strengthen the ability of the subcommittees to advise the board.

The board retains the following duties to:

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In fulfilling these duties the Board pays particular attention to:

Board appointments, induction and training

The board appoints new trustees through a transparent and inclusive recruitment and selection process where board members must be aged over 16 years, meet the skills, knowledge and experience needed for the effective administration of Women's Aid and commit to upholding the organisation's mission and values. The board is considering additional recruitment plans during 2021/22.

On appointment, new board members receive a comprehensive induction to their role with Women's Aid. Information supplied includes a copy of Women's Aid's Memorandum and Articles of Association, a copy of Women's Aid's latest reports and statement of accounts and an induction pack.

The board recognises a new trustee needs ongoing support to be effective and will follow the six key principles of good governance as set out in the Women's Aid's Governance Framework.

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

In order to ensure all trustees receive ongoing support the board will, where realistic:

Trustees can expect to learn, develop, and be able to take on different responsibilities within the board. The board will be continuing its governance effectiveness review over the next year to ensure it is following good governance practice appropriate to the size, scale and nature of the charity's operations.

Annual General Meeting (AGM)

Women's Aid will invite all full members and board members to the AGM. Copies of the annual report and accounts will be sent to the board members and made available to all other members at the meeting venue.

The notice calling an AGM will be sent to all members 21 days before the meeting date. The notice will set out:

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES

Charitable objects

The principal activity of the charity is to promote the protection of women and children who have suffered from, or are exposed to, gender-based violence, including the preservation and protection of their mental and physical health, the relief of need and the promotion of research and education concerning gender-based violence.

Vision

A world where every woman's right to equality and freedom from violence is unquestioned.

Purpose

Women's Aid exists to use its expertise, knowledge and influence to raise the status of women to a level where violence against them is no longer legitimised or tolerated.

Strategy

Our strategy has four main objectives:

  1. Key target audiences understand coercive control, its impact and the diverse experiences of survivors.

  2. Legislation and policy framework strengthened to protect survivors, their children and the specialist services supporting them.

  3. More effective state, private and specialist sector response to domestic violence and abuse. 4. Women's Aid is established as a sustainable organisation with the ability to grow.

Our business plan for 2020/21 set out the following one-year aims:

Our activities to achieve each of these are outlined below.

1) Women’s Aid is securing the changes that survivors and services need during Covid-19

Funding, policy and practice

Since the outbreak of the pandemic, we have prioritised the response to Covid-19 in our campaigning and policy work. We knew that the pandemic would have a severe impact on survivors and our member services, and we mobilised quickly to mitigate this. Our foremost priorities were to ensure that services secured additional government funding during this time, and that survivors' safety was considered within measures taken to control the virus.

We joined forces with sister organisations in the violence against women and girls (VAWG) sector to secure essential emergency funding for life-saving services during the pandemic. This resulted in £48million for services supporting victims of domestic and sexual violence in England during 2020-21. We also helped to secure the practical changes that frontline women's services needed - such as staff being listed as keyworkers, and a route for refuges to access personal protective equipment (PPE). This fed into guidance on domestic abuse from the Local Government Association and the Local Government Information Unit, to set out what members need from local authorities during this time.

Recognising the critical importance of supporting survivors during Covid-19, we worked with VAWG sector organisations to develop support information for survivors and community members, ensuring that the resources spoke to needs of survivors facing intersecting barriers to support. These resources were translated into 15 different languages and British Sign Language, and have been shared and disseminated widely.

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

Women's Aid has participated in high profile political debates on Covid-19 including: submitting responses to four different parliamentary select committee inquiries on the pandemic; giving oral evidence twice to the Home Affairs Committee; and setting out the increasing and changing needs of members and survivors during Covid-19 to decision makers including the Domestic Abuse Commissioner, Ministry of Justice and Home Office.

Covid-19 monitoring

When the country went into lockdown on 23rd March 2020, Women's Aid knew that this would have a very real impact on the lives of women experiencing domestic abuse, their children and the dedicated specialist services supporting them. The research team is researching the impact. We listened to the survivors and providers we interact with and reviewed our key data sources. We used this to design surveys of survivors, providers and community ambassadors. We published a series of briefings on our Covid-19 monitoring page on our website and in August 2020 we published our report "A Perfect Storm", which pulled together all of our evidence to date. This will be an ongoing area of work for us, which we are now integrating into our other workstreams

National Training Centre

This year saw some major changes in the way that we work in order to respond to the Covid-19 restrictions put in place by the government, resulting in the postponement of all face-to-face training at the beginning of the year through to the end of August 2020. During this time the introduction of blended learning (some remote deliveries, alongside assignment writing and pre-reading) was introduced, with the whole department having to quickly upskill on new delivery techniques committed to introduce remote deliveries as soon as possible.

As organisations and businesses became more aware of the Covid-19 related increase in risks of domestic abuse due to people having to work from home and often alongside their abusers, we received a larger than usual demand for training as the year progressed. We have worked tirelessly throughout the year to accommodate all requests.

Change That Lasts

This year saw some major changes in the way that we work in order to respond to the Covid-19 restrictions put in place by the government, resulting in the postponement of all face-to-face training at the beginning of the year. During this time, we developed new ways to deliver Ask Me Community Ambassador training and Trusted Professionals training remotely, including a mixture of online workshops alongside pre-reading. The whole department had to upskill on new delivery techniques, including learning how to use online platforms to deliver training and consider how we could deliver trauma-informed training online. We also developed new ways to reach out to communities. During the first lockdown period we hosted a series of online webinars for our network of Community Ambassadors, including a session with Nicole Jacobs, Domestic Abuse Commissioner. We also hosted a series of webinars open to all members of the community across the country who wanted to improve their response to domestic abuse at the beginning of this year.

Direct Services

Over the last year we have expanded the opening hours of the Women's Aid Live Chat service to 7 days a week from 10am to 6pm. We are intending to expand the opening hours further in the next coming month. We have increased the team to 9 full time support workers to meet the demand.

We are working closely with our Translation and Accessibility Officer and our Digital Product Development Officer in addressing efficiencies and accessibility throughout all of our Direct Services.

We have also developed a digital resource for professionals working with survivors so that they can receive information and support as well as providing up to date refuge vacancies in a timely way.

We continue to provide dedicated telephone support and advocacy through the 'No Woman Turned Away' project to women who have barriers to accessing safe/refuge accommodation.

There was some foresight in thinking about tech as the lockdown and the move to remote working highlighted how much digital transformation was needed by our members and the level of support we were able to give them. Focusing on areas slightly outside of 'procurement', but which strengthened the team working across the organisation and our members, the team

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

We have continued to provide sustainability support to members during the pandemic. As well as supporting members to apply successfully for emergency funding, we have provided advice and consultancy on all aspects of maintaining and funding quality services for survivors - including on commissioning, leadership and service design.

"Thank you so much for the fabulous discussion we had with you on Tuesday, it was so heartening for us to have your support... many thanks, and we are so appreciative of your help." (Sue Filmer, Management Committee, Andover Crisis and Support Centre)

"Thank you - your support means a lot, particularly at the moment" CEO, Manchester Women's Ai d

Our response to Covid-19

During Covid-19, people came to us for support and advice. We created resources on our website for survivors, the public, and for members through a dedicated area. We shared posts on our social networks to raise awareness of services, share information as it came out, and to campaign for extra support from the government.

Through the website we saw a huge demand for the Covid-19 resources - with a high level of traffic visiting our varied webpages on Covid-19. We released our Covid-19 support for survivors and member services at the end of March 2020 and remained consistent with it thereafter. In April 2020, we achieved the highest engagement ever on Women's Aid platforms, following the hugely successful Covid-19 messaging. We received 530,820 visitors in the first quarter (1st April-30th June), compared to 450,584 per quarter on average for the rest of the year. It also compares to 328,285 in the same quarter the year before, a 61.69% increase.

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES Aims

2) Women’s Aid provides strong leadership in influencing policy and practice

SOS campaign achieves key aims around sustainable funding

During the course of this year the SOS: Save Refuges, Safe Lives campaign focused on influencing the government's statutory duty on local authorities to fund support in 'safe accommodation'. Whilst this has signified a major step forward in securing a long-term funding solution for refuges, we have had significant concerns about the level of funding underpinning the duty and how specialist women's refuges will be protected.

We have been successful in pushing the government to increase the level of funding attached to the duty - increasing from £90 million to £125 million in its first year. Whilst that falls short of the £173 million we estimate refuges need annually, it demonstrates the major impact that our research and campaigning has had in pushing the government to act.

We have also worked with Imkaan to push for changes to the statutory duty itself, to clearly define specialist women's refuges and place stronger requirements on local authorities to value their expert support within funding and commissioning. These amendments had cross-party support and peers used them to press for guarantees that specialist provision is delivered under the duty. Whilst the government opposed our amendments, we have made a clear impact on the draft statutory guidance for the duty - which requires local authorities to fund services with Women's Aid's, Imkaan's or the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government's Quality Standards.

We worked to hold local authorities accountable for their existing housing duties for survivors. We intervened in a legal challenge of Camden Council's decision to house a female survivor in mixed-sex temporary accommodation, using evidence from our direct services and members to demonstrate this was far from an isolated incident. In a significant victory, Camden agreed to take account of our arguments when assessing homeless survivors and in reviewing their use of mixed-sex temporary accommodation.

Domestic Abuse Bill meets the needs of survivors and our member services

The Domestic Abuse Bill's progression has entailed a lengthy parliamentary journey through challenging times politically and globally, from general elections to the Covid-19 pandemic. Throughout, we have delivered leadership on the Bill and have improved the legislation from the original draft to its final format which has now received Royal Assent. Fighting for the urgently needed legislative changes has been a key focus within our engagement with Ministers and political stakeholders, and within our briefings and statements, over the past year.

The areas Women's Aid has directly secured key changes or government commitments on include:

These successes have benefited from our coordination of collaboration with other sectors, for example partnerships with the Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance and other housing sector organisations, and the children's coalition we chair alongside Action for Children. We have utilised the combined knowledge and influence of these organisations in our work on the Bill, which has been acknowledged by a recent nomination for a Sheila McKechnie Foundation award for 'best coalition'.

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES

Despite positive improvements to the law, we have remained vocal on our concerns about the lack of full and equal protection and support for migrant women in solidarity with organisations led by and for Black and minoritised women, including Southall Black Sisters, and the Step Up Migrant Women campaign led by Latin American Women's Rights Service. This campaign did secure a new duty on the government to issue a code of practice on how data is shared between the public and services which survivors report to (such as the police), and immigration enforcement in the Act. This is a significant win in the context of the hostile environment.

Women's Aid has continued to lead collaboration and joint campaigning within the VAWG sector on the legislation, through regular meetings and calls. The membership of VAWG sector organisations involved in this work expanded to over 30, resulting in wider support for joint briefings and written evidence which Women's Aid has led on and coordinated. The meetings have also enabled the sector to discuss and strategically respond to wider policy issues, and discuss tackling structural inequalities, anti-racism and the future of the VAWG strategy. Our impact as leaders on the Bill has been recognised by a number of key decision makers:

"I wanted to thank you personally for all of the work and dedication you have given to this legislation. It has been an inspiring experience to see the sector working together so effectively and with such unity and it is leaders like you that are making that happen. I have been moved by your passion, expertise and influence which has certainly improved this legislation and will change and impact lives." Domestic Abuse Commissioner, Nicole Jacobs

"Congratulations on your work so far on the Domestic Abuse Bill (....) it would not have happened without the brilliant Women's Aid team." Apsana Begum MP, Chair of the APPG on Domestic Violence and Abuse

The Women's Aid campaign (the Law in the Making Project) is a great campaign, so I am pleased to hear that you are part of it." Victoria Atkins MP, Minister for Safeguarding

"I want to thank Women's Aid and other organisations for the help they have given all noble Lords on this Bill and for their general work. I have always been grateful to Women's Aid for its advice on a number of issues." Lord Kennedy of Southwark, Labour

"It is impossible to describe the real progress that has been made (...) thanks to voluntary organisations such as Women's Aid, which has campaigned tirelessly" Lord Young of Cookham, Conservative Peer

Leadership in the public policy agenda on domestic abuse

We also continue to act as the Secretariat for the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Domestic Violence and Abuse, ensuring the group is seen as the key cross-party vehicle for action on domestic abuse within parliament. We held three public meetings of the APPG during the year, and one closed meeting between the group and the Home Office Minister Victoria Atkins MP, highlighting the influential nature of the group. We have elected a new Chair and Vice Chair, Apsana Begum MP and Baroness Bertin, and new Officers which ensures that the group is well connected to the 2019 intake of MPs following the General Election and with the House of Lords.

Child First campaign achieves key aims around safe family court system and policy framework

June 2020 marked the publication of the Ministry of Justice expert 'harm panel' report. The report concluded that the family courts do not effectively protect many child and adult victims of domestic abuse from further harm. Following the report's publication, the government amended the Domestic Abuse Bill to include some of the report's recommendations (see below), which were key asks of the Child First campaign. It also announced other measures to address some of the recommendations, such as pilots of a new 'investigative approach' to domestic abuse cases, and reviews of domestic abuse perpetrator programmes and the legal presumption of parental involvement, which Women's Aid has contributed to. We continue to advocate for the wider urgent reforms to the culture of the family courts required to ensure women and children are protected.

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES

Our campaigning in this area has helped to ensure that the Domestic Abuse Act will have a number of key provisions that will help to make the family courts safer for survivors and their children. These include:

During debates around the bill there were proposals to include the damaging concept of "parental alienation" as part of the definition of abuse. We worked hard to brief members of both houses about impact of this dangerous and unhelpful concept on survivors and their children, and the proposals were withdrawn. We have continued to press these concerns in relation to the Act's statutory guidance.

In November 2020, we began convening a working group for survivors and legal experts on domestic abuse and the family courts. The aim was to bring these two groups together to discuss possible collaborations and explore legal routes to challenging the failures of the family courts around domestic abuse. Since this time, the group has grown and it now includes the Domestic Abuse Commissioner, London's Victims Commissioner, sector organisations and academics. The group is proving very useful for information sharing and planning legal challenges, including in the Court of Appeal cases discussed below.

In January this year, we intervened, along with Welsh Women's Aid, Rights of Women and Rape Crisis England and Wales, in four joined Court of Appeal cases relating to domestic abuse and the family courts. These appeals were from mothers who had experienced dismissive attitudes and minimisation of the domestic abuse and sexual violence they had experienced. We argued that the problems arising in the four cases were not "one off" examples of poor practice and decision making, but were representative of widespread systemic problems across family justice· Three of the four appeals were upheld, with the Court of Appeal agreeing that poor decisions had been made. Our intervention was crucial in securing key elements of the final judgment - which stressed the importance of judges and magistrates having proper understanding of coercive and controlling behaviour.

We have continued a significant programme of engagement with Cafcass to improve their response to domestic abuse over the past year. This has included membership of their Learning and Improvement Board, set up to respond to the findings of the Ministry of Justice 'harm panel' report. As part of this work, survivors from our experts by experience network took part in a detailed case audit and inputted considerably into Cafcass' learning and improvement plan. This will be published in June 2021 and aims to map out changes to improve Cafcass' practice in cases where there is domestic abuse. We have also commented on Cafcass' updated domestic abuse practice pathway, and engaged in planning meetings for their new family forum.

Women's Aid launches new campaign driven by the voices and priorities of survivors and members

Following consultation with survivors, members, and the WAFE staff team on our next flagship public policy campaign, mental health and trauma was selected as our focus. We secured three-year funding for the campaign from Gamesys Foundation, followed by initial scoping work with survivors, members and sector colleagues to develop our campaign plan. The agreed overarching aim of the campaign is to:

Change perceptions and attitudes towards survivors' mental health which compound women's trauma and inequality; and reform the funding and resourcing landscape to enable specialist women's services - including those led 'by and for' Black and minoritised groups -to deliver long-term healing.

We are committed to ensuring the campaign is intersectional in approach and impact, and takes a genuinely collaborative and survivor-led approach. With this in mind, we have established a Survivor Advisory Board for the campaign, which we are co-facilitating with Imkaan; alongside an Expert Advisory Group for the campaign with an intersectional focus in regard to membership (members include Stay Safe East, Sign Health, Faith and VAWG Coalition, Galop, and the Latin American Women's Rights Service). We have also been consulting with our Research, Policy, Campaigns and Comms (RPCC) members group on the campaign development, which will function as the member advisory group for the campaign.

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES

The recruitment for the Survivor Advisory Board was conducted during December 2020-March 2021 in partnership with Imkaan. We recruited 13 women for the board; ensuring the group reflected the diversity of survivors' experiences*, centering the most marginalised voices was key - and much of the recruitment was targeted with 'by and for' services. We held our first workshop with the group on 31st March 2021

*Group demographic statistics: Black and minoritised women - 8/13 (62%); LGBT - 3/12 (25%) (1x prefer not to say); Deaf and Disabled - 3/12 (25%) (1x prefer not to say); Under 25 - 1/13 (8%); Over 60 - 2/13 (15%).

The diversity of survivors' experiences is central to our policy and campaigning work

Over the past year we have worked to ensure that our approach to survivor engagement has been inclusive and responsive to survivors facing different forms of inequality. We continued to strengthen the views and priorities of survivors in our public policy work and platform the voice of survivors. Our diverse Experts by Experience Network (survivor campaigners) were involved in a number of key areas of our policy and campaigning work in 2020/21, including:

We have also continued to engage our network of Campaign Champions with a monthly newsletter which provides updates on our key campaigns and policy priorities and a monthly campaign action to take part in - such as writing to MPs about the Domestic Abuse Bill or signing key petitions. In 2020/21 we had 557 new sign ups, giving us a total of 2,319 Campaign Champions. The average open rate of Campaign Champion emails is 37.2% (the average for the non-profit sector is 25.17%), and the average click through rate: 5.9% (the average for the non-profit sector is 2.25%)

Diversity of voice is reflected throughout our work:

We ensure diversity of voices across all of our work and proactively source images of women of a range of ethnicities and ages for our website and social media visuals. Our communications reflect the diversity of survivor voices and women who use domestic abuse services, advocating strongly for specialist services for women with protected characteristics and those who find multiple barriers to gaining the support we need - as evidenced in our 'No Woman Turned Away' project.

We strongly maintain there is no one 'ideal', 'perfect' or 'typical' survivor. Every woman is different and has different needs.

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES

16 Days 2020:

Media work to increase public awareness

Between 1st April 2020 and 31st March 2021, we released 31 press releases and had 9327 mentions in local and national media in print, broadcast and online (previous year 6294 mentions). 3838 mentions were related to the pandemic, including 81 mentions of A Perfect Storm report.

Key media coverage:

16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence

Our focus for 16 Days was on togetherness and the strength of the sector, women and our supporters. We wanted to acknowledge Covid-19 but also bring positivity into the year after a difficult time, giving survivors hope for the future.

We promoted our single, This Time It's Forever by Ian Bartholomew, which featured survivors. We highlighted the power of language and the importance of using the right terminology when talking about domestic abuse so that survivors and their communities, can better understand domestic abuse. We also highlighted the extension of Rail to Refuge and the vital route to freedom that it gives survivors.

With our sister federations, we launched the Research Integrity Framework, highlighting the importance of ethical, accountable research.

International Women's Day

We launched our dedicated service for professionals currently working in the sector, developed in response to the devastating impact of Covid-19 on survivors and domestic abuse keyworkers. Women's Aid's Direct Services team can search on Violence Against Women and Girls' services in the UK, providing the latest information on vacancies in refuges, and availability of other Violence Against Women and Girls' services including outreach, drop-ins, counselling services and advocacy projects.

We also launched our petition to require local authorities to fund lifesaving women's domestic abuse services, in response to a number of our members losing local authority funding. The petition is currently at 8,524 signatures.

Farah Nazeer wrote her first blog as Women's Aid CEO, highlighting the importance of funding women's domestic abuse services and promoting the petition.

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES Aims

3) Women's Aid is a strong, sustainable federation led by members

Lobbying for Member Services and Sustainability for the Sector

Our impactful SOS: Save Refuges, Saves Lives campaign saw major progress in 2019 when the government committed to a new statutory duty on local authorities to provide support for survivors in refuges and other forms of safe accommodation, to be delivered through legislation. This was a landmark moment in our campaign for a sustainable national network of refuges, and Women's Aid was high profile when it was announced. The statutory duty was finally published in the revised Domestic Abuse Bill in March 2020. Further details of our SOS campaign are provided in section two.

Direct support to member organisations:

Our expert Membership Support and Quality Standards team advise and support a wide range of organisations, including existing and prospective member services, external stakeholders and partners. We provide a space for CEOs of members' services to communicate directly with one another for peer support, advice and information; manage a dedicated Members Area of the Women's Aid website, monthly news bulletins and co-ordinate the biannual Regional Network Meetings as a networking space for members to meet. In March 2021 we celebrated one year of Rail to Refuge, and the continuation of funding for ticket costs. The first year of Rail to Refuge provided free travel for 1,148 survivors, including 362 children over five (worth over £50,000). The project needed extensive collaboration between Women's Aid, the Rail Delivery Group, train companies, and our sister federations - which has involved building trusting relationships with unlikely partners during the pandemic. Rail to Refuge has continued to receive very positive media coverage, and cross-party political support, with 6% of MPs tweeting their support. At least 81 of our member services have booked Rail to Refuge tickets for women feeling violence. With the Rail to Refuge scheme, families with children of all ages have been able to travel many miles across the country. Putting distance between themselves and their perpetrator is crucial for their safety.

An open ticket also proved to be valuable.

''Before this scheme was in place, I remember on one occasion how it suddenly became unsafe for one family to leave at the planned time and they missed the train, which caused a knock-on effect on all the other connections. This meant this woman with her three children, youngest in a pram and the eldest with learning needs, was left standing at a platform late at night. So, I am very happy to know that open tickets are now part of the scheme. It is such good news that the Rail to Refuge scheme is to be extended for another year. And, hopefully for many years to follow.''

Children and young people's work

Our expert Children and Young People's officer began 2020 with an exciting new three year 'Safer Futures' project, generously funded by Yves Saint Laurent (YSL) for further work with children and young people. This project involves a widespread engagement with schools across the country to improve education for children and young people about domestic abuse, and to ensure that 'healthy relationships' education is delivered safely, responsibly and effectively for children and young people. Through it we will transform relationships, stopping abuse before it starts.

The Expect Respect Toolkit was launched during Valentine's Day 2021 and provides easy to follow resources that are aimed at children and young people aged four to 18 that covers the root issues linked to violence against women and children.

Training has been developed and delivered to create a network of Expect Respect Advocates to be part of our vision to reach our targets in the UK but also be part of the wider global vision to reach two million people by the end of the decade. The aim of the partnership with YSL Beauty is to reach children and young people to educate them on the signs of Intimate Partner Violence, over a three-year period. A minimum of 12,000 children and young people will be trained on gender-based violence as part of an ongoing global campaign ABUSE IS NOT LOVE aiming to educate two million people by 2030 and work towards long-term eradication of abuse.

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES

The project will train 40 new Expect Respect Advocates over three years, who will lead on various points in the fight against Intimate Partner Violence: supporting schools to deliver work that addresses sexism and gender-based violence, delivering workshops, creating a network of Expect Respect Advocates and disseminating Expect Respect toolkit and educational materials. At least 12,000 children and young people will benefit from the program.

The Expect Respect Toolkit serves as a guide for teachers and professionals and contains age-appropriate activities that support children through primary education. It provides resources aimed at schools that must ensure gender and sexism education is provided effectively. It helps deal with resolving conflict, tackling gender stereotypes, understanding what domestic abuse is and what the law says about it, challenging behaviour in early relationships and more. The toolkit will be deployed nationwide to schools and organisations.

We currently have over 161 professionals either having taken some training or awaiting training to become an advocate. There were many challenges in relation to lockdown and pressures facing schools, which we have been flexibly responding to during this time.

We have had a wide reach across media during the launch with opportunities to speak on current news items with our ambassador Alice Liveing. This has included: BBC Three counties Radio, BBC Desi Stories, Radio Tyneside, Greatest Hits radio, Talk Radio, UK Health Radio amongst many others.

As of March 2021:

The Good Practice Guide, 'Making Children Visible', is due to be completed in June 2021. This guide showcases the important role that specialist support services play in protecting children and young people targeted at commissioners. The focus on children and young people was welcomed by our specialist services who were often not seen or heard for the important role they play, and this guide is an opportunity to highlight their vital life-saving work. It explores the constant need for many organisations to continually 'prove' the importance of their work with children and young people within specialist domestic abuse services, and the struggle to maintain funding and support for their vital lifesaving services.

Nine members took part in developing this guide, including Saheli, Humraaz, West Mercia Women's Aid and Haven, who fed into the initial consultation meetings.

The eight services featured in the guide are: Hull Women's Aid, Cambridgeshire Women's Aid, Jewish Women's Aid, South Liverpool Domestic Abuse Services, Darlington Family Help, Trafford Domestic Abuse Services, The Wish Centre, Haven Sheffield and Crossroads Derbyshire.

The report shares many concerns as well as recommendations from specialist services in relation to funding and commissioning practices.

Women's Aid National Quality Standards

The National Quality Framework is a set of integrated tools for measuring the performance, and assessing the quality of services supporting women and children survivors. Our respected and valued National Quality Standards are more frequently being referenced by commissioners and the government.

Our National Quality Standards (NQS) have been in existence for six years, and during that time many members have successfully applied for them. Last year we cited 42 members and this year we 63 in total, an increase of 66%.

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES

Our programme of NQS assessments was badly disrupted last year by the Covid-19 pandemic. Three members successfully completed, and were awarded our new NQS Stage One accreditation in the summer of 2020. Then, later in 2020, 18 small and/or BME members successfully applied for our NQS Stage One as part of a Comic Relief grant award. A further three members opted to undertake Imkaan's Safe Minimum Practice Standards, which is a bespoke accreditation programme tailored for BME specialist women's services. Almost all of the 21 members completed this task, which is an astounding testimony to the feminist leaders who achieved this whilst managing life-saving services during a global pandemic.

No fees were charged for the 21 accreditations, as these were funded via Comic Relief's Big Night In Fund. Our NQS Stage One accreditation has been developed to enable our smaller and/ or BME members to achieve them. They told us that they couldn't apply for our full NQS as they couldn't afford the fees and they did not have the capacity to undertake such a detailed assessment. Once a member has achieved NQS Stage One, they are expected to achieve the full NQS within three years. We like to describe this as our members being on a quality journey.

NQS Stage One covers the same seven quality standards in the full NQS, which are Safety, Security & Dignity/ Rights & Access/ Physical & Emotional Health/ Stability, Resilience & Autonomy/ Children & Young People/ Leadership & Prevention and finally Governance & Accountability. The difference is that the evidence bar is lower, and it builds a firm foundation to achieve the full NQS, making our services more resilient and robust, strengthening their sustainability and evidencing practice to commissioners and funders.

"A huge thank you to Women's Aid for their support in receiving the fund from Comic Relief, and for believing in our skills and abilities as the organisation to help Polish women escape the violence they have experienced. We are very grateful for this opportunity and now have even more motivation and resilience to work towards our shared mission until all women and children are safe. Thank you for being our Champion organisation, inspiring us every day, and providing the support we are privileged to receive, also because of this fund we have been able to start a very important process for our organisation which is to gain the National Quality Standard". Aneta Mackell, Service Manager, Opoka

DATABASES

On Track: Outcomes Measurement System

On Track continues to provide members with a valued outcomes monitoring solution, and accompanying case management system, Oasis with On Track. We now have 86 organisations that have signed up for the project and improvements have been made based on feedback from participating organisations. Specifically, this year, an additional Covid-19 tab was added to record information on the impact of Covid-19 on survivors. We provided free on-boarding support to organisations joining the programme and moved our reporting workshops online to ensure member organisations can make the most of their data.

In 2020/21, information about 59,952 adults was recorded on On Track, providing a valuable evidence base to inform our work. In the past year, data has been used for the Annual Audit report, in the No Woman Turned Away report, to inform the DA Bill and to respond to ad-hoc queries from policy makers. Data from the Change That Lasts pilot sites was shared with The University of Central Lancashire to inform their evaluation of VOICES.

Routes to Support (formerly UK Refuges Online)

Women's Aid continues to manage the Routes to Support (RtS) project on behalf of a partnership with our sister federations. The project provides a referral database of VAWG services and refuge vacancies to national helplines and local services across the UK to support their work with survivors. During the year 2020/21 there were 178,922 logins to the site in England alone, demonstrating how widely it is used. In our user evaluation, 98% of respondents said they agreed that, by providing VAWG services with 24hr access to information on refuge vacancies and other services, RtS is an essential resource for the VAWG sector and 99% of respondents in the user evaluation agreed that by providing an online system for referrals, RtS improves accessibility to services for women and children experiencing domestic abuse. It further provides a public service directory on the Women's Aid website and the Goldbook Online directory, which is available at cost to other agencies.

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES

The project also provides data on the scope and nature of domestic abuse provision through the database and the annual survey of services listed. This year we produced the 2020 Annual Snapshot which contributed to our longitudinal dataset. The data was used in The Domestic Abuse Report 2021: The Annual Audit along with findings from On Track and our Annual Survey, as well as and in media and policy work throughout the year and our two informative and accessible live data dashboards to display data from RtS and our Annual Survey which are available on the research and publications page of our website.

Women's Aid also collects additional data through RtS from London refuges. We presented findings from this data to various fora in London and continue to maintain our online data dashboard which stakeholders use to better understand the picture of domestic abuse service provision across London.

This year RtS was used to provide detailed information on the availability of refuge vacancies during the Covid-19 pandemic to successfully support the case to government for emergency funding to be made available to refuge services.

REPORTS AND PUBLICATIONS

Fragile Funding Landscapes: the extent of local authority commissioning in the domestic abuse refuge sector

Women's Aid published 'Fragile Funding Landscapes: the extent of local authority commissioning in the domestic abuse refuge sector' in February 2021. The report used data from Routes to Support, the Annual Survey, data from a Freedom of Information request to all Local Authorities and a Commissioning Survey of providers to examine the number of refuge services in England running without any statutory funding in 2019/20, and to determine the extent to which funding for commissioned services covered the costs of providing the service. The report reveals the huge number of refuge services running without any statutory funding including a significant proportion of specialist services 'by and for' Black and minoritised women.

The Domestic Abuse Report 2021: The Annual Audit

We published 'The Domestic Abuse Report 2021: The Annual Audit' in January 2021. This report presents information on the provision and usage of domestic abuse services in England, mainly focusing on the financial year 2019/20. This year we included an additional section on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Research Integrity Framework

In November 2020, the four Women's Aid federations from Scotland, England, Wales, and Northern Ireland published a 'Research Integrity Framework' (RIF) to show the quality of research on domestic abuse. Developed with and endorsed by academic researchers, this framework provides decision-makers with clarity on the merits of different types of evidence and research, and the principles of integrity relating to research on domestic abuse.

Change That Lasts Impact Briefing Four

In November 2020, we published 'Change that Lasts Impact Briefing 4'. The briefing pulls together findings from the delivery of our Change That Lasts programme from December 2018 to December 2019. A summary of the changes is also available here:

https://www.womensaid.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Change-That-Lasts-Impact-Briefing-Summary. pdf

Nowhere to Turn for Children and Young People

'Nowhere to Turn for Children and Young People' was published in September 2020. The report is a unique, visual exploration of how experiencing and fleeing domestic abuse affects the lives of children and young people.

A Perfect Storm: the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on survivors and the services supporting them We published 'A Perfect Storm: the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on survivors and the services supporting them' in August 2020. The report examines the impact of the pandemic on survivors and their children, how abusers use the pandemic as a tool of abuse and how the services supporting survivors are affected. The report builds on three earlier briefings focusing on the experiences of survivors, services and community ambassadors, also available on our website.

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES

The Domestic Abuse Report 2020: The Hidden Housing Crisis

'The Domestic Abuse Report 2020: The Hidden Housing Crisis' was published in June 2020. The report examines the housing experiences of survivors of domestic abuse. It draws on evidence from the Women's Aid Survivor Voice Survey 2019 (136 respondents) and case study interviews.

Nowhere to Turn 2020

'Nowhere to Turn 2020' was published in June 2020. The report uses data from the No Woman Turned Away project to provide an insight into what happens to those women who are unable to access refuge services.

OTHER RESEARCH

City University Data Project

Professor Sylvia Walby is developing a research proposal to look at the overlap between different datasets (e.g. Crime Survey, Adult Psychiatric Mobidity Survey, police data, specialised services). As part of her preparatory work, she funded us to explore how our data and expertise might contribute to this work. Alongside a consultant, we explored how On Track national data can be manipulated to better speak to other external and internal datasets and options for developing our cost-benefit analysis, considering levels of funding and quality of service. We are expecting the outcome of her bid in May 2021. If successful, we will collaborate with her over the coming five years.

Gendered experiences of abuse

As part of a Knowledge Exchange Fellowship between Women's Aid and the University of Bristol, a member of our research team has been working with the Centre for Gender and Violence Research to analyse 36 transcripts of in-depth interviews with domestic abuse survivors from the ESRC-funded 'Justice Inequality & Gender Based Violence' research project. The analysis has focussed on identifying 'gendering discourses', namely those conceptualisations and uses of language that strengthen and perpetuate inequality between men and women, and re/produce oppressive gendered norms and stereotypes. We identified gendering discourses on mental health, sexuality and household roles, and that these discourses had the impact of excusing perpetrators' abusive actions and minimising or silencing survivors' voices.

Coercive control and chemical restraints

We are part of an Oak Foundation-funded research project with the University of Bristol exploring chemical restraints and coercive control. The literature review for the first stage is currently underway.

Review of ONS Crime Survey

The University of Bristol, with colleagues from Women's Aid, the College of Policing and Respect were commissioned by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to carry out research to support the redevelopment of questions on domestic abuse in the Crime Survey for England and Wales. We are part of the research team for the project. We facilitated consultation with female survivors about the survey questions and survivors' experiences in filling in surveys on domestic abuse. The team will report back to ONS in May 2021.

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES Aims

4) Survivors and their children have access to high quality information and support when they need it

Website and digital resources

This year we have seen a 25% increase in users on the website.

Acquisition has seen an uplift (+27%) in organic traffic (i.e. traffic from unpaid search engine results), which indicates our SEO is performing well . Our acquisition is mostly (by far) from organic searches (69%). Our highest performing referrals are from Facebook (5%), Google ads (1.95%), Twitter (1.29%), and Citizens Advice (0.82%), with NHS and Gov.uk not far behind.

Our Instagram referrals have increased significantly , with Instagram stories going up +2,687% (10,367). YouTube is also performing well with referrals, with an increase of 454% (6,569).

Our social media channels have seen significant growth this year. Instagram was a key area of growth for us, with 28,500 new followers bringing the total to 45,500 (+168.65%). The rate of growth was up 64% on the previous year (which had a 10,000 increase in followers). On Instagram, we ended the financial year with our highest number of monthly followers ever, in March 2021, where we received just over 5,000 new followers in just one month.

Our Facebook page likes have grown by 13,717, taking us from 58,834 to 72,560 (+23.33%). The year before we gained 10,373 from April 2019 to March 2020. In comparison to the previous year, we have seen a 24.3% increase in the rate of growth for our Facebook likes.

Our Twitter followers from April 2020 to March 2021 has gone up by 14,239, from 118,361 at 1st April 2020 to 132,600 on 31st March 2021 (+12.03%).

Direct Services and Digital Support

No Woman Turned Away

The No Woman Turned Away (NWTA) caseworkers are continuing to support women who are facing barriers to accessing a refuge space. This financial year 286 referrals were made into the project, 197 of which went on to receive support from the NWTA caseworkers. The number of women supported by the NWTA project is lower than in previous years. This is largely due to a change in referral pathways into the project and the time it has taken for these pathways into the project and the time it has taken for these pathways to become established, alongside a pandemic. Since the change in provider of the National Domestic Violence Helpline, referrals from this source have stopped so we have continued to expand the range of referral pathways for the project to ensure we are supporting as many women as possible.

The Nowhere to Turn 2021 report analyses data collected by the caseworkers between 12th January 2020 and 31st December 2020, and is due to be published in the summer of 2021. The report shows how the shortage in refuge provision is continuing to prevent women from finding spaces of safety, and highlights how the project is making a significant difference in the lives of these women. With the help of the NWTA caseworkers, almost a third of the women supported by the project were able to find suitable refuge accommodation.

Aligned to this publication is a report focusing on financial hardship in survivors of domestic abuse and the impact this hardship has on their experiences. This report will add to Women's Aid's existing evidence base on the links between economic resources and domestic abuse - following on from The Economics of Abuse and The Hidden Housing Crisis.

Live Chat

Our bespoke Live Chat online support service was sprint developed and launched with expertise from experienced Support Workers and with staged user-research and input this year, thanks to generous donations. We recognised the importance of enabling survivors to access our high calibre support digitally - with the potential to reach more women as they spend more time in the digital space.

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES

Live Chat is still in its infancy and has huge potential as we continue to develop and improve this new bespoke digital product and service, alongside building a larger direct services team trained up in supporting survivors via Women's Aid's digital services. Covid-19 has increased the need for these kinds of digital services and visitors to the Live Chat homepage escalated to 2,500 per week at the end of March. The feedback form from users has seen 98% of women say they would recommend the service, and 90% saying they got all the answers to their questions. Women are leaving feeling 'empowered', 'relieved' and 'more informed'. The Live Chat opening hours have been expanded and is now open 7 days per week from 10.00 am to 6.00 pm.

Survivors' Forum

Our forum for survivors has an average of around 10,000 users any month. It provides a vital space for sharing support with peers online and forums are an important pillar of our support package. We are working on a redevelopment plan around this unique platform for peer-to-peer support. The first stage means we are currently working on research and evaluation on the accessibility, so we can move into a redevelopment phase that makes this forum a unique resource available to more women, breaking down existing barriers around access, diversity and inclusion. Our Direct Service support staff also responded to 3227 emails from survivors, and their supporters, seeking support.

Young Survivors, Love Respect & Digital

In 2019, Women's Aid launched a website for young people called Love Respect, which has been providing information for young people on some of the signs of an unhealthy relationship and empowering them to seek healthy relationships. Love Respect is also designed to encourage young people to play an active part in conversations around coercive behaviours, gender equality and male violence against women and girls, and to challenge common narratives with content that is educational and informative. We continue to review and develop the site, and have recently recruited a new Love Respect Ambassador, comedian Maddy Anholt, to join author Holly Bourne.

Women's Aid National Training Centre

The National Training Centre has had a busy year carrying out the development of remote deliveries and fulfilling bespoke requests for training and speakers. The majority of the deliveries were carried out from September through to the end of March, due to lockdown restrictions.

NOCN Nationally Accredited Qualifications

We were delighted to qualify 59 new advocates taking the total to 609 registered professionals. These advocates will provide a wide-ranging and in-depth skillset in a variety of roles, including refuge worker, IDVA, outreach and children's work. 40 people also qualified in the Award, which is primarily for volunteers and those wishing to work in the sector. In total this generated 356 assignment papers to mark.

Remote training sessions:

We developed new courses to be delivered remotely. These included domestic abuse awareness raising webinars which were delivered to over 100 people and 89 webinars for understanding the use of coercive control. There were five multi sessions delivered for the Destitute Domestic Violence Concession (DDVC), in which 135 from our member services attended. Three sessions on "top 20 tips for working with the media" and two webinars on social media use. All of these, because of their popularity, will be repeated next year with the addition of new sessions.

Bespoke training and speakers

Requests for bespoke training are designed around the specific needs of the work being carried out by the contracting organisations, for example:

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES

Change That Lasts is our plan for a future where all survivors get the right response to domestic abuse the very first time

The Women's Aid Federation England and Welsh Women's Aid partnership Change That Lasts programme, continues to flourish with investment from the Department of Culture Media and Sport and The Community Foundation. Key highlights for the programme this year include:

The University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN) has evaluated a second year's delivery of Ask Me and Trusted Professional in National Lottery Community Fund sites. Findings show continued increase in knowledge, understanding, awareness, confidence and skills in responding to domestic abuse, immediately after Ask Me and Trusted Professional training. These reports also show recommendations from UCLAN's year one reports have been utilised to improve practice, and this is reflected in year two findings.

Findings from UCLAN's year two reports, our own Impact Briefings and internal monitoring of data, for delivery which took place December 2018 to December 2019,will be reflected on in the coming months to continue to improve delivery and sustain best practice. The potential for Change That Lasts to create a step change in society's response to domestic abuse is becoming evidenced from our early findings.

5) Women's Aid is a strong, financially viable organisation with a stable, diversified workforce ensuring anti-racist attitudes are at the heart of the work we do

Support to the organisation for new business/ income generation ideas

During the year Women's Aid engaged a consultancy to assist us with developing an income generation model, primarily to help us increase our unrestricted income. The project identified three key areas in which Women's Aid should focus to help achieve this objective.

The high profile of domestic abuse during this year has meant that the main focus has been applications to trusts, funds and government bodies, and less focus on generating unrestricted income from our activities. The findings of the income generation report will be reviewed and implemented in the next financial year.

Support progress towards a diverse workplace with robust anti-oppressive, and anti-racist policies and practice

To achieve our aim of becoming an inclusive, anti-racist organisation that reflects the communities we serve and is an ally to organisations led 'by and for' Black and minoritised women and other marginalised groups, we have embarked on the following:

Our goal is to achieve 30% of representation from Black and minoritised women across all teams, and grades, including the board, and establish Women's Aid as an Intersectional Feminist organisation, where equality, diversity and inclusion are as much a part of our core identity as feminism and a survivor focus.

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES

Overall, our goal is to establish a skilled and collaborative inclusive feminist leadership team where equality, diversity and white ally-ship is included in work planning and appraisal frameworks and are as much a part of the core identity as feminism.

Improve our profile by working with media, high profile supporters using our social media channels and advising on storylines and national campaigns to ensure we retain a prominent profile and lead in the domestic abuse sector.

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES

MAINTAINING THE CHARITY AS FIT FOR PURPOSE

As an organisation, we have been continuing internal renewal and strengthening as befits a charity of our size. We are continuing to update our governance and processes which will be pursued in the coming year, plus future strategy developments as a new CEO joins us, to take us forward. New board members and advisors will join our subcommittees and internal team structures will be developed to ensure we are able to support our plans, as well as manage risk.

How our strategic aims and charitable activities deliver public benefit

Women's Aid exists to use its expertise, knowledge and influence to raise the status of women to a level where violence against them is no longer legitimised or tolerated. Our charitable activities all aim to deliver on the four key strategic outcomes, which are:

  1. Key target audiences understand coercive control, its impact and the diverse experiences of survivors.

  2. Legislation and policy framework strengthened to protect survivors, their children and the specialist services supporting them.

  3. More effective state, private and specialist sector response to domestic violence and abuse. 4. Women's Aid is established as a sustainable organisation with the ability to grow.

These outcomes are underpinned by a series of departmental business plans, which ensure that we focus limited resources where they are best placed to deliver on them. The Women's Aid Theory of Change and business plans are shared with funders and other key stakeholders.

The board has referred to the guidance contained in the Charity Commission's general guidance on public benefit when reviewing the charity's aims and objectives and in planning its future activities in both the annual business planning and longer-term strategic planning cycles. In particular, the trustees have considered how planned activities will contribute to the aims and objectives that have been set and ensured that this is clearly articulated both internally and externally, and appropriately documented and shared.

Activities have included our awareness raising advert Respite, produced by Engine, which highlighted the effects of the Covid-19 lockdown on survivors. We have also worked closely with Eastenders and Coronation Street, with storylines raising awareness of coercive control and the barriers survivors face in leaving abuse reaching the homes of thousands of women. Our work with our ambassador Katie Piper has also reached broad audiences with Pantene's recent advert showing support for Women's Aid.

KEY CHARITABLE OBJECTIVES FOR 2021/22

We will have the following one-year aims:

Strategic goal 1: Membership

To build a sustainable, connected, supported and accountable network of members, who have confidence in Women's Aid's approach and value base and are supported to navigate external contexts including commissioning and sustainability:

Strategic goal 2: Direct Services /Practice / Training

Women, their families and their children have access to high quality, needs-led specialist support no matter who, where or when they ask for help. Services for survivors will have access to high quality training and qualifications.

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES

Direct services

National Training Centre

Change That Lasts

Strategic goal 3: Culture

To work towards becoming a genuinely anti-racist organisation, which centres marginalised survivor voices and promotes a diverse and vibrant federation.

Strategic goal 4: Policy and Campaigning

Women's Aid amplifies the voices of survivors and members and uses lived experience to transform the collective societal response to domestic abuse.

Strategic goal 5: Evidence

To strengthen policy and practice so that it meets the needs of survivors and the services supporting them, with an evidence base that centres the voices of diverse survivors.

Strategic function: Comms

As both an enabler of change and a strategic function to achieve societal change.

Strategic function: Fundraising, Finance and HR

To achieve financial resilience and the ability to resource delivery of our strategy.

Fundraising and Corporate Advocacy

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES

Strategic function and enabler: HR

FINANCIAL REVIEW

Financial position

The charity's total income amounted to £10,091,885 (2020: £5,483,520). This includes a valuation for generously donated services and facilities of £392,135 (2020: £181,742 - see note 2 of the accounts for more information. Underlying income excluding donated services and facilities was £9,699,750 (2020: £5,301,778).

In these unprecedented times, the Covid 19 pandemic has meant that there has been a high level of coverage of the causes and impact of domestic abuse. This has led to a sharp increase in donations. With everyone trapped in their homes, thoughts turned to those most disadvantaged. We are incredibly grateful to all of those who reacted to the immediate needs of survivors.

This has been an exceptional year for the charity and the plan is to use the funding raised during this year towards supporting our members and ensuring the long-term sustainability of the federation.

Total expenditure for the year amounted to £5,511,251 (2020: £5,239,978). Underlying expenditure excluding the value of donated services was £5,119,116 (2020: £5,058,236).

The charity's assets are available and adequate to fulfil its obligations on a fund by fund basis.

The charity's performance during the year resulted in an actual net surplus of £4,580,634 (2020: £243,542) made up of restricted funds surplus of £1,227,021 (2020: deficit of £127,853) and unrestricted funds surplus of £3,353,613 (2020: £371,395).

Reserves

The total balance of funds at 31st March 2021 amounts to £6,035,843 (2020: £1,455,209). This includes restricted funds of £1,971,996 (2020: £744,975). The balance of unrestricted funds at 31st March 2021 was £4,063,847 (2020: £710,234). Of these unrestricted funds, free reserves (calculated as total unrestricted funds, less designated funds and tangible fixed assets) amounted to £1,713,847 (2020: £710,234).

Designated reserves totalling £2,350,000 have been set aside to further our work around three priority areas:

The board considers that the state of the charity's affairs is satisfactory, and that the charitable company is well situated to carry out its objectives in the future.

The reserves policy has been reviewed and updated during this financial year.

The board recognises that the charity serves many beneficiaries with an ongoing need and as such the organisation's reserves policy has been set with the long term financial viability of the charity as a critical factor and within the context of the short-term nature of funding contracts.

Trustees have determined that free reserves should be set at an amount sufficient to support core operating and wind down costs for a minimum period of three months and a maximum of six months. Due to the unprecedented year, the current level of free reserves of £1,713,847 would be sufficient to support core operating and wind down costs for twelve months (2020: six months).

With the appointment of the new Chief Executive, the charity will be undertaking a thorough business planning process in 21/22. This will inform the organisation's financial strategy which will ensure that the charity's assets are being used in the most effective way to further the charity's mission and objectives.

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

FINANCIAL REVIEW

Principal funding sources

Women's Aid continued to benefit from a wide range of funding sources during 2020-21 and a summary of our principal funders (those that amount to more than 3% of total income) is set out below:

% of total
Funder income Projects supported by funding
Change That Lasts pilots as part of Roadmap for
Big Lottery Fund/ Department of System Change partnership with SafeLives and
Culture Media and Sport 12% Covid support
Direct Services, Tech vs Abuse and member support
Comic Relief 9% during Covid
Home Office 5% Direct Services and Covid support
Ministry of Housing, Communities Routes to Support and No Woman Turned Away
and Local Government 3% Project
Pan-London Domestic and Sexual Violence Helplines
London Councils 3% and coordinated access to refuge provision

Income in support of key objectives

A summary of income in support of key projects and activities, shown as a proportion of total income during the year, is set out below, and accounted for 38% of total income:

Change That Lasts 10%
Direct Services 14%
Support for our members, including Covid related assistance 10%
Routes to Support & No Woman Turned Away 4%

A further 3% of our income was self-generated from earned income consisting of National Training Centre course fees and income from our annual conference, membership fees, sales of publications and merchandise, as well as advertising space. Women's Aid remains committed to increasing funding from these valuable sources.

Support for key activities

Expenditure on the projects highlighted in the section above accounted for 62% of total expenditure. In addition, several projects and core activities were supported by restricted funds brought forward and unrestricted reserves in 2020-21, as set out in note 20.

Fundraising performance

In 2020, we were overwhelmed by the generosity of our wonderful supporters generating over £4,045,849 through statutory, voluntary and earned income. We are enormously grateful to all those organisations and individuals who have supported our work over the course of the year, and remain committed to working with our existing funders to deliver effective solutions to domestic abuse.

In 2020 we launched our first emergency appeal to raise vital funds for our brand new live chat service to support survivors. This was a huge success, raising over £500,000 (target £200,000). This campaign also resulted in us seeing a huge increase in unrestricted donations to Women's Aid to support our work.

We would like to thank the large numbers of individuals who have continued to loyally support our work through making regular donations, responding to appeals, taking part in sponsored challenges, organising events, and speaking out on their own social media and within their networks about the importance of challenging domestic abuse.

We would also like to thank the loyal and committed full and associate members of our federation whose subscriptions enable us to develop our member support activities.

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

FINANCIAL REVIEW

Community

We have seen a significant 250% rise in our Community Fundraising income this year. With all mass participation events cancelled in response to Covid-19, we adapted to virtual events and started providing resources for fundraisers to help with this new way of fundraising.

We want to thank the increasing number of fundraisers (63% increase compared to 2019/20) who have chosen to support Women's Aid during such a challenging year and who have found inventive ways to raise important funds to support our work. Some particular memorable fundraising this year includes Victoria, a survivor who became the first Spanish woman to row across the Atlantic. Victoria and her rowing team have raised an incredible £34,000 for their charities and are still receiving donations; a quarter of this final total will be donated to Women's Aid.

Another notable fundraising event was the #SupportSurvivors emergency appeal launched in March 2020 to fund our Live Chat service. We decided to create a virtual challenge alongside this campaign to run through May, to encourage extra donations and support. We asked supporters to pledge a challenge, whether that be physical or non-physical, and commit to raising £100. In total, this campaign raised £117,658.88. A large proportion of the money raised came from a London-based non-audition community choir called London City Voices. They released a video of Carole King's song "You've Got A Friend" and raised £100,441 with many of their large donations coming from corporate contacts.

We are very grateful to Women's Aid's corporate supporters, who are an integral part of our movement to end domestic abuse. This year we have seen increased engagement from corporate supporters, which we believe is out of a response to the pandemic and wanting to support survivors at this time. We continue to steward thee relationships to hopefully garner further support for Women's Aid. We continue to make all corporate supporters aware of the opportunities to undertake training to skill them to better support their colleagues and communities.

This year we have been generously supported by our Corporate Partners:

We have also received donations this year from the below companies, whose generosity has enabled us to continue our vital work:

We would also like to recognise those corporate supporters who wish for their contributions to remain anonymous, and those we have not been able to name here. We are grateful for all your support.

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

FINANCIAL REVIEW

Trust and Statutory

Women's Aid relies on income from trust and statutory sources of whom we are very grateful to receive their support. We are proud to work in partnership with the following funders to achieve our mission:

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

FINANCIAL REVIEW

We are grateful to The Tempest Trust, The Cobalt Trust, The Northwick Trust, Kering Foundation, The Joron Charitable Trust, Roots and Wings Foundation, The Monday Charitable Trust, Golden Bottle Trust, The Grand Trust of the Order of Women's Freemasons, The Aim Foundation, The Cobalt Trust, The Guy Charitable Trust, Sutton Place Foundation, Tyabji Foundation, Mazars Charitable Trust, The Dullatar Foundation, The Hawerby Trust, The Ashla Charitable Trust, Mrs J P Tindall Charitable Trust, The Woodward Charitable Trust, The Immersion Capital Foundation, Cecil and Hilda Lewis Charitable Trust, Masterserve, R E Chadwick Charitable Trust, The Grand Trust of the Order of Women's Freemasons, The Mill Charitable Trust, The Wallace and Edna Davis Charitable Foundation, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom Charitable Trust, The Paragon Trust, The Keeble Charitable Trust, The Wideman Foundation, Nichols Charitable Trust, The Marsh Christian Trust, Ian Mactaggart Trust, Edward S Smyth Trust, The Mrs Wingfield Charitable Trust for their support of our core costs, enabling us to direct funds where they are most needed to support women and children affected by domestic abuse.

Stewardship

We ran our most successful Winter Appeal to date , which continued the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence theme of togetherness and uniting to support survivors at this particularly challenging time of year. This appeal exceeded its income target by 177% . This was a collaborative effort between the Fundraising and Comms team, who provided vital digital suppo rt to compliment the postal appeal.

We continued to see a high level of one-off online donations throughout the year (a 486% increase in volume of gifts on the year 2019/20) and increased regular giving (a 251% increase on the year 2019/20) , which led us to surpass all fundraising team KPI targets for the year. We note the relevance of increased media coverage of Women's Aid in response to current events having a positive impact on our donations. Covid-19 and the light it has shone on domestic abuse has had a significant positive impact on our unrestricted income from the public. More recent events, such as the tragic death of Sarah Everard also saw an influx in donations come to Women's Aid.

We plan to focus on donor retention for 2021/22, ensuring excellent donor stewardship for existing and newly acquired supporters, as well as expanding our virtual fundraising opportunities.

Legacies

Women's Aid has been a very fortunate recipient of some exceptionally generous Legacy gifts this past financial year, which have brought in over £300,000 in unrestricted funds. These kind gifts have helped us to achieve many of the successes detailed in this report, the impacts of which will be felt for years to come.

This year also saw an increase in the number of enquiries into legacy gifts. We intend to build on this new interest to try to secure more confirmed legacy gift pledges.

Investment performance

Under the terms of the Memorandum and Articles of Association, the charity may invest monies of Women's Aid not immediately required for its own purposes in or upon such investments, securities or property as may be thought fit. The level of the charity's reserves is such that investment is limited to short-term markets rather than any long-term strategy, although other options continue to be explored. Over the past year we have continued to take a prudent view in terms of the security of the charity's reserves rather than pursuing the highest return. The investment policy is being kept under review to take account of investment opportunities whilst maintaining a low-risk strategy.

Page 26

WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

STRUCTURE, GOVERNANCE AND MANAGEMENT

Governing document

The Women's Aid Board of Trustees is responsible for overseeing the management of the charity and delegates this responsibility on a day-to-day basis to the Chief Executive. The Director of Services acted up as Interim Chief Executive between 1st April 2020 and 28th February 2021. Farah Nazeer joined as permanent CEO on 1st March 2021. At present, there is a staff team of 82 full and part-time staff and one volunteer.

Financial and operational policies, agreed by the board, are also in place, which govern the management of the charity. The organisation's Theory of Change, reviewed periodically in a process involving both the board and the full staff team, provides the framework for the charity's annual business plan, which is produced as part of an annual planning, consultation and budgeting cycle. Annual work plans enable the delivery of the core and development objectives, which are approved by the board, and monitoring against these plans forms the basis of quarterly reports to the trustee meetings.

Risk management

The Executive Leadership Team (ELT) has conducted a review of the risks to which the charity is exposed. A risk register and board assurance framework document are updated regularly by the Heads of and Management teams, with review and approval sought at the board's quarterly meetings. These documents are intended to manage and monitor strategic organisational risks, with a focus on those with delivery, financial, and reputational consequences.

The scoring of risks is based on discussion among the ELT,the heads and managers in the organisation. It has also been influenced by recent in-depth risk analyses of partnership projects. These projects have their own risk registers shared with partners.

Website

Trustees are responsible for the maintenance and integrity of the corporate and financial information included on the charitable company's website. Legislation in the United Kingdom governing the preparation and dissemination of financial statements may differ from legislation in other jurisdictions.

Pay policy for senior staff

The board considers that the ELT comprises the key management personnel of the charity in charge of directing and controlling, running and operating the charity on a day-to-day basis. All trustees give up their time freely and no trustee received remuneration in the year. However, we pay a nominal honorarium to member organisations represented by a trustee. Details of trustees' expenses and related transactions are disclosed in the accounts.

The pay of the staff is reviewed annually, and the charity considers whether it is affordable to increase pay in accordance with average earnings.

Connections to wider network

Women's Aid is a federation of 166 organisations providing 274 lifesaving local services to women and children across England. Our network also includes a further 64 organisations run by non-members who are engaged with us through the Routes to Support database of services. The year-on-year reduction in members is primarily caused by services closing due to loss of funding, or merging in order to meet the requirements of statutory funders.

The charity works in partnership with a range of statutory, voluntary, corporate and other bodies to deliver its mission and achieve its objectives. Membership is based on signing an agreement to support the charity's mission, aims and objectives. There are two membership categories:

  1. Full Members: organisations that deliver direct services

  2. Associate Members: other supporting organisations

Women's Aid local member services provide a range of refuge and community-based services to address domestic violence including sexual violence in intimate partner relationships. Members work to national standards for service delivery, including the Women's Aid National Quality Standards which cover all aspects of service delivery, as well as using model policies and procedures developed by Women's Aid.

Page 27

WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

REFERENCE AND ADMINISTRATIVE DETAILS Registered Company number 03171880 (England and Wales)

Registered Charity number 1054154

Registered office

PO Box 3245 Bristol England BS2 2EH

Trustees

Chief Executive Chief Executive Farah Nazeer (from 1st March 2021)
Acting Chief Executive Nicki Norman (until 28th February 2021)
Trustees Dickie James
Jo Gough - Vice Chair
Lindsey Wishart - Treasurer
Lorna Badrick
Madi Turpin
Naomi Dickson
Sarah Hill - Chair
Zlakha Ahmed
Subcommittee members Amanda Elwen
Angie Stewart
Sara McIlroy
Patrons Julie Walters
Melanie Brown
Ambassadors Alice Liveing
Bill Ward
Charlie Webster
Jahmene
Lucy Gaskell
Michelle Griffith-Robinson OLY
Toby-Alexander Smith
Will Young
Solicitors Burroughs Day18-21 Queen StreetBristolBS1 4NH
Bank Co-Operative Retail Bank16 St Stephen StreetBristolBS1 1JR

Auditors

Bevan Buckland LLP Chartered Accountants And Statutory Auditors Ground Floor Cardigan House Castle Court Swansea Enterprise Park Swansea SA7 9LA

Page 28

WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

STATEMENT OF TRUSTEES' RESPONSIBILITIES

The trustees (who are also the directors of Womens Aid Federation of England for the purposes of company law) are responsible for preparing the Report of the Trustees and the financial statements in accordance with applicable law and United Kingdom Accounting Standards (United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice).

Company law requires the trustees to prepare financial statements for each financial year which give a true and fair view of the state of affairs of the charitable company and of the incoming resources and application of resources, including the income and expenditure, of the charitable company for that period. In preparing those financial statements, the trustees are required to

The trustees are responsible for keeping proper accounting records which disclose with reasonable accuracy at any time the financial position of the charitable company and to enable them to ensure that the financial statements comply with the Companies Act 2006. They are also responsible for safeguarding the assets of the charitable company and hence for taking reasonable steps for the prevention and detection of fraud and other irregularities.

In so far as the trustees are aware:

AUDITORS

The auditors, Bevan Buckland LLP, will be proposed for re-appointment at the forthcoming Annual General Meeting.

Approved by order of the board of trustees on ............................................. and signed on its behalf by: 8 October 2021

................................................................. Sarah Hill - Chair

Page 29

REPORT OF THE INDEPENDENT AUDITORS TO THE MEMBERS OF WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

Opinion

We have audited the financial statements of Womens Aid Federation of England (the 'charitable company') for the year ended 31 March 2021 which comprise the Statement of Financial Activities, the Balance Sheet, the Cash Flow Statement and notes to the financial statements, including a summary of significant accounting policies. The financial reporting framework that has been applied in their preparation is applicable law and United Kingdom Accounting Standards (United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice).

In our opinion the financial statements:

Basis for opinion

We conducted our audit in accordance with International Standards on Auditing (UK) (ISAs (UK)) and applicable law. Our responsibilities under those standards are further described in the Auditors' responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements section of our report. We are independent of the charitable company in accordance with the ethical requirements that are relevant to our audit of the financial statements in the UK, including the FRC's Ethical Standard, and we have fulfilled our other ethical responsibilities in accordance with these requirements. We believe that the audit evidence we have obtained is sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our opinion.

Conclusions relating to going concern

In auditing the financial statements, we have concluded that the trustees' use of the going concern basis of accounting in the preparation of the financial statements is appropriate.

Based on the work we have performed, we have not identified any material uncertainties relating to events or conditions that, individually or collectively, may cast significant doubt on the charitable company's ability to continue as a going concern for a period of at least twelve months from when the financial statements are authorised for issue.

Our responsibilities and the responsibilities of the trustees with respect to going concern are described in the relevant sections of this report.

Other information

The trustees are responsible for the other information. The other information comprises the information included in the Annual Report, other than the financial statements and our Report of the Independent Auditors thereon.

Our opinion on the financial statements does not cover the other information and, except to the extent otherwise explicitly stated in our report, we do not express any form of assurance conclusion thereon.

In connection with our audit of the financial statements, our responsibility is to read the other information and, in doing so, consider whether the other information is materially inconsistent with the financial statements or our knowledge obtained in the audit or otherwise appears to be materially misstated. If we identify such material inconsistencies or apparent material misstatements, we are required to determine whether this gives rise to a material misstatement in the financial statements themselves. If, based on the work we have performed, we conclude that there is a material misstatement of this other information, we are required to report that fact. We have nothing to report in this regard.

Opinions on other matters prescribed by the Companies Act 2006

In our opinion, based on the work undertaken in the course of the audit:

Page 30

REPORT OF THE INDEPENDENT AUDITORS TO THE MEMBERS OF WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

Matters on which we are required to report by exception

In the light of the knowledge and understanding of the charitable company and its environment obtained in the course of the audit, we have not identified material misstatements in the Report of the Trustees.

We have nothing to report in respect of the following matters where the Companies Act 2006 requires us to report to you if, in our opinion:

Responsibilities of trustees

As explained more fully in the Statement of Trustees' Responsibilities, the trustees (who are also the directors of the charitable company for the purposes of company law) are responsible for the preparation of the financial statements and for being satisfied that they give a true and fair view, and for such internal control as the trustees determine is necessary to enable the preparation of financial statements that are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error.

In preparing the financial statements, the trustees are responsible for assessing the charitable company's ability to continue as a going concern, disclosing, as applicable, matters related to going concern and using the going concern basis of accounting unless the trustees either intend to liquidate the charitable company or to cease operations, or have no realistic alternative but to do so.

Page 31

REPORT OF THE INDEPENDENT AUDITORS TO THE MEMBERS OF WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

Our responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements

Our objectives are to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements as a whole are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error, and to issue a Report of the Independent Auditors that includes our opinion. Reasonable assurance is a high level of assurance, but is not a guarantee that an audit conducted in accordance with ISAs (UK) will always detect a material misstatement when it exists. Misstatements can arise from fraud or error and are considered material if, individually or in the aggregate, they could reasonably be expected to influence the economic decisions of users taken on the basis of these financial statements.

Extent to which the audit was considered capable of detecting irregularities, including fraud

We identify and assess the risks of material misstatement of the Financial Statements, whether due to fraud or error, and then, design and perform audit procedures responsive to those risks, including obtaining audit evidence that is sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our opinion.

We discussed our audit independence complying with the Revised Ethical Standard 2019 with the engagement team members whilst planning the audit and continually monitored our independence throughout the process.

Identifying and assessing potential risks related to irregularities

In identifying and assessing risks of material misstatement in respect of irregularities, including fraud and non-compliance with laws and regulations, our procedures included the following:

Audit response to risks identified

In addition to the above, our procedures to respond to risks identified included the following:

Page 32

REPORT OF THE INDEPENDENT AUDITORS TO THE MEMBERS OF WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

We also communicated relevant identified laws and regulations and potential fraud risks to all engagement team members and remained alert to any indications of fraud or non-compliance with laws and regulations throughout the audit.

A further description of our responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements is located on the Financial Reporting Council's website at https://www.frc.org.uk/auditorsresponsibilities. This description forms part of our auditor's report.

A further description of our responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements is located on the Financial Reporting Council's website at www.frc.org.uk/auditorsresponsibilities. This description forms part of our Report of the Independent Auditors.

Use of our report

This report is made solely to the charitable company's members, as a body, in accordance with Chapter 3 of Part 16 of the Companies Act 2006. Our audit work has been undertaken so that we might state to the charitable company's members those matters we are required to state to them in an auditors' report and for no other purpose. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we do not accept or assume responsibility to anyone other than the charitable company and the charitable company's members as a body, for our audit work, for this report, or for the opinions we have formed.

Alison Vickers (Senior Statutory Auditor) for and on behalf of Bevan Buckland LLP Chartered Accountants And Statutory Auditors Ground Floor Cardigan House Castle Court Swansea Enterprise Park Swansea SA7 9LA

Date: ............................................. 8 October 2021

Page 33

WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

STATEMENT OF FINANCIAL ACTIVITIES FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

Notes
INCOME AND ENDOWMENTS FROM
Donations and legacies
2
Charitable activities
5
Change That Last
Direct Services
Campaigning
Training and support for Members
Other Activities
Covid related support
Other trading activities
3
Investment income
4
Other income
Total
EXPENDITURE ON
Raising funds
Raising donations and legacies
6
Other trading activities
7
Charitable activities
8
Change That Last
Direct Services
Campaigning
Training and support for Members
Other Activities
Covid related support
Total
NET INCOME
Transfers between funds
19
Net movement in funds
RECONCILIATION OF FUNDS
Total funds brought forward
TOTAL FUNDS CARRIED FORWARD		 Unrestricted
Restricted
funds
funds
£
£
4,351,092
548,315
-
1,022,101
-
1,615,396
-
69,760
-
969,556
960
1,023,713
-
173,578
249,271
24,327
270
-
43,546
-
4,645,139
5,446,746
356,455
-
306,597
-
663,052
-
-
1,172,634
-
1,257,749
-
121,349
-
1,077,458
701,485
313,980
-
203,544
1,364,537
4,146,714
3,280,602
1,300,032
73,011
(73,011)
3,353,613
1,227,021
710,234
744,975
4,063,847
1,971,996		 2021
Total
funds
£
4,899,407
1,022,101
1,615,396
69,760
969,556
1,024,673
173,578
273,598
270
43,546
10,091,885
356,455
306,597
663,052
1,172,634
1,257,749
121,349
1,077,458
1,015,465
203,544
5,511,251
4,580,634
-
4,580,634
1,455,209
6,035,843		 2020
Total
funds
£
1,320,000
2,200,296
1,030,603
65,000
407,566
-
-
459,078
977
-
5,483,520
372,285
361,331
733,616
2,389,974
980,502
70,827
408,408
656,651
-
5,239,978
243,542
-
243,542
1,211,667
1,455,209

The notes form part of these financial statements

Page 34

WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

BALANCE SHEET 31 MARCH 2021

Notes
CURRENT ASSETS
Debtors
16
Cash at bank
CREDITORS
Amounts falling due within one year
17
NET CURRENT ASSETS
TOTAL ASSETS LESS CURRENT
LIABILITIES
NET ASSETS
FUNDS
19
Unrestricted funds
Restricted funds
TOTAL FUNDS		 Unrestricted
funds
£
688,932
4,240,403
4,929,335
(865,488)
4,063,847
4,063,847
4,063,847		 Restricted
funds
£
-
1,971,996
1,971,996
-
1,971,996
1,971,996
1,971,996		 2021
Total
funds
£
688,932
6,212,399
6,901,331
(865,488)
6,035,843
6,035,843
6,035,843
4,063,847
1,971,996
6,035,843		 2020
Total
funds
£
717,675
1,591,235
2,308,910
(853,701)
1,455,209
1,455,209
1,455,209
710,234
744,975
1,455,209

These financial statements have been prepared in accordance with the provisions applicable to charitable companies subject to the small companies regime.

The financial statements were approved by the Board of Trustees and authorised for issue on ............................................. and were signed on its behalf by: 8 October 2021

............................................. Sarah Hill - Chair

............................................. Lindsey Wishart - Treasurer

The notes form part of these financial statements

Page 35

WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

CASH FLOW STATEMENT FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

Notes
Cash flows from operating activities
Cash generated from operations
1
Net cash provided by/(used in) operating activities
Cash flows from investing activities
Interest received
Net cash provided by investing activities
Change in cash and cash equivalents
in the reporting period
Cash and cash equivalents at the
beginning of the reporting period
Cash and cash equivalents at the end
of the reporting period		 2021
£
4,620,894
4,620,894
270
270
4,621,164
1,591,235
6,212,399		 2020
£
(85,316)
(85,316)
977
977
(84,339)
1,675,574
1,591,235

The notes form part of these financial statements

Page 36

WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

NOTES TO THE CASH FLOW STATEMENT FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

1. RECONCILIATION OF NET INCOME TO NET CASH FLOW FROM OPERATING ACTIVITIES OPERATING ACTIVITIES
2021 2020
£ £
Net income for the reporting period (as per the Statement of
Financial Activities) 4,580,634 243,542
Adjustments for:
Interest received (270) (977)
Decrease/(increase) in debtors 28,743 (423,496)
Increase in creditors 11,787 95,615
Net cash provided by/(used in) operations 4,620,894 (85,316)

2. ANALYSIS OF CHANGES IN NET FUNDS

Net cash
Cash at bank
Total		 At 1.4.20
£
1,591,235
1,591,235
1,591,235		 Cash flow
£
4,621,164
4,621,164
4,621,164		 At 31.3.21
£
6,212,399
6,212,399
6,212,399

The notes form part of these financial statements

Page 37

WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

1. ACCOUNTING POLICIES

Basis of preparing the financial statements

The financial statements of the charitable company, which is a public benefit entity under FRS 102, have been prepared in accordance with the Charities SORP (FRS 102) 'Accounting and Reporting by Charities: Statement of Recommended Practice applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102) (effective 1 January 2019)', Financial Reporting Standard 102 'The Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland' and the Companies Act 2006. The financial statements have been prepared under the historical cost convention.

Going Concern

The trustees consider that there are no material uncertainties about the Charity's ability to continue as a going concern nor any significant areas of uncertainty that affect the carrying value assets held by the charity.

Income

All income is recognised in the Statement of Financial Activities once the charity has entitlement to the funds, it is probable that the income will be received and the amount can be measured reliably.

Donations are recognised when the Charity has been notified in writing of both the amount and settlement date. In the event that a donation is subject to conditions that require a level of performance by the Charity before the Charity is entitled to the funds, the income is deferred and not recognised until either those conditions are fully met, or the fulfilment of those conditions is wholly within the control of the Charity and it is probable that these conditions will be fulfilled in the reporting period.

Legacy gifts are recognised on a case by case basis following the grant of probate when the administrator/executor for the estate has communicated in writing both the amount and settlement date. In the event that the gift is in the form of an asset other than cash or a financial asset traded on a recognised stock exchange, recognition is subject to the value of the gift being reliably measurable with a degree of reasonable accuracy and the title to the asset having been transferred to the Charity.

Deferred income represents amount received for future periods and is released to incoming resources in the period for which, it has been received. Such income is only deferred when:

Where services or facilities are provided to the Charity as a donation that would normally be purchased from our suppliers this benefit is included in the financial statements at it's fair value unless it's fair value cannot be reliably measured, then at the cost to the donor ot the resale value of goods that are to be sold.

Expenditure

Liabilities are recognised as expenditure as soon as there is a legal or constructive obligation committing the charity to that expenditure, it is probable that a transfer of economic benefits will be required in settlement and the amount of the obligation can be measured reliably. Expenditure is accounted for on an accruals basis and has been classified under headings that aggregate all cost related to the category. Where costs cannot be directly attributed to particular headings they have been allocated to activities on a basis consistent with the use of resources.

Grants offered subject to conditions which have not been met at the year end date are noted as a commitment but not accrued as expenditure.

Governance costs

These include the costs attributable to the Charity's compliance with constitutional and statutory requirements, including audit, strategic management and Trustee's meetings and reimbursed expenses.

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS - continued FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

1. ACCOUNTING POLICIES - continued

Allocation and apportionment of costs

Support costs include central functions and have been allocated the activity cost categories on a basis consistent with the use of the resources, for example, allocating property costs by floor area, or per capita, staff costs by the time spent and other costs by their usage.

Tangible fixed assets

Depreciation is provided at the following annual rates in order to write off each asset over its estimated useful life.

Taxation

The Charity is considered to pass the test set out in Paragraph 1 Schedule 6 of the Finance Act 2010 and therefore it meets the definition of a charitable company for UK corporation tax purposes. Accordingly, the Charity is potentially exempt from taxation in respect of income or capital gains received within categories covered by Chapter 3 Part 11 of the Corporation Tax Act 2010 or Section 256 of Taxation of Chargeable Gains Act 1992, to the extent that such income or gains are applied exclusively to charitable purposes.

Fund accounting

Unrestricted funds can be used in accordance with the charitable objectives at the discretion of the trustees.

Restricted funds can only be used for particular restricted purposes within the objects of the charity. Restrictions arise when specified by the donor or when funds are raised for particular restricted purposes.

Further explanation of the nature and purpose of each fund is included in the notes to the financial statements.

Pension costs and other post-retirement benefits

The charitable company operates a defined contribution pension scheme. Contributions payable to the charitable company's pension scheme are charged to the Statement of Financial Activities in the period to which they relate.

Trade debtors

Trade debtors are amounts due from customers for merchandise dols or services performed in the ordinary course of business.

Trade debtors are recognised initially at the transaction price. They are subsequently measured at amortised cost using the effective interest method, less provision for impairment. A provision for the impairment of trade debtors is established when there is objective evidence that the Charity will not be able to collect all amounts due according to the original terms of the receivables.

Cash and cash equivalents

Cash and cash equivalents comprise cash on hand and call deposits, and other short-term highly liquid investments that are readily convertible to a known amount of cash and are subject to an insignificant risk of change in value.

Trade creditors

Trade creditors are obligations to pay for goods or services that have been acquired in the ordinary course of business from suppliers. Accounts payable are classified as current liabilities if the Charity does not have an unconditional right, at the end of the reporting period, to defer settlement of the creditor for at least twelve months after the reporting date. If there is an unconditional right to defer settlement for at least twelve months after the reporting date, they are presented as non-current liabilities.

Trade creditors are recognised initially at the transaction price and subsequently measured at amortised cost using the effective method.

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continued...

WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS - continued FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

1. ACCOUNTING POLICIES - continued

Trade debtors

Financial Instruments

Classification

Financial assets and financial liabilities are recogniseed when the charity becomes a party to the contractual provisions of the instrument.

Financial liabilities and equity instruments are classified according to the substance of the contractual arrangements entered into. An equity instrument is any contract that evidences a residual interest in the assets of the Charity after deducting all of its liabilities.

Recognition and measurement

All financial assets and liabilities are initially measures at transaction price (including transactions costs), except for those financial assets classified as at fair value though profit or loss, which are initially measured at fair value (which is normally the transaction price excluding transaction costs), unless the arrangement constitutes a financing transaction. If an arrangement constitutes a financing transaction, the financial asset or financial liability is measured at the present value of the future payments discounted at a market rate of interest for a similar debt instrument.

Financial assets and liabilities are only offset in the statement of financial position when, and only when there exists a legally enforceable right to set off the recognised amounts and the Charity intends either to settle on a net basis, or to realise the asset and settle the liability simultaneously.

Financial assets are derecognised when and only when a) the contractual rights to the the cash flows from the financial asset expire or are settled, b) the Charity transfers to another party substantially all of the risks and rewards of ownership of the financial asset, or c) the Charity, despite having retained some, but not all, significant risks and rewards of ownership, has transferred control of the asset to another party.

Financial liabilities are derecognised only when the obligation specified in the contract is discharged, cancelled or expires.

2. DONATIONS AND LEGACIES

DONATIONS AND LEGACIES
Donations
Legacies
Donated services and facilities		 2021
£
4,199,827
307,445
392,135
4,899,407		 2020
£
978,056
160,202
181,742
1,320,000

Legacy income has been accrued where the Charity has been notified that it is entitled to a reasonable estimate of monies. However, the timing of these monies is uncertain as the legacies are subject to the realisation of assets within the legacy estate, which from past experience can take more than a year to be realised.

In addition to the generous financial support receive from all of our supporters over the last 12 months, we would also like to extend our gratitude to those individuals and organisations who donated products and services to Women's Aid.

Donated services during the year are:

2021 2020
£ £
Facebook - 5,700
Bristol University - 1,335
Legal pro-bono

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS - continued FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

2. DONATIONS AND LEGACIES - continued

Freshfields - Policy Support
Linklaters LLP
Taylor Wessing LLP
Kemp Little LLP
Legal pro-bono for the Membership team
Morrison & Foerster (UK) LLP
Legal pro-bono for Marketing
Engine Group
Legal pro-bono for Campaigning
Garden Court Chambers
Bhatt Murphy Solicitors
4 Paper Buildings
Scott-Moncrieff and Associates
Confidential
Legal pro-bono for Other Activities
Jenner & Block LLP
Goodwin Procter
3.
OTHER TRADING ACTIVITIES
Membership
Publications
Consultancy & Speakers' fees
National Training Centre
National Conference
Other conference and events
Advertising and merchandise
4.
INVESTMENT INCOME
Deposit account interest		 - 76,644
- 25,000
- 8,446
- 4,463
44,264 40,654
84,704 19,500
17,875 -
35,656 -
53,100 -
1,109 -
24,262 -
19,203 -
111,962 -
392,135 181,742
2021
£
100,134
19
4,680
131,507
-
13,104
24,154
273,598
2021
£
270		 2020
£
97,630
8,282
7,967
262,781
45,692
15,160
21,566
459,078
2020
£
977

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS - continued FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

5. INCOME FROM CHARITABLE ACTIVITIES

INCOME FROM CHARITABLE ACTIVITIES
Activity
Grants
Change That Last
Grants
Direct Services
Grants
Campaigning
Grants
Training and support for Members
Grants
Other Activities
Grants
Covid related support
Grants received, included in the above, are as follows:
Home Office
London Councils
Lloyds Bank Foundation for England and Wales
Comic Relief
The National Lottery Community Fund
Minister for Housing and Communities & Local Government
Avon Cosmetics UK Ltd
Waltham Forest Council
Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
Oak Foundation
Legal Education Fund
Other Small Grants
Anonymous donor
Tesco
Restricted donations
Kering
House of CB
YSL
BLF
Refinitiv
Barclays
Gamesys
World Gold Council
The Sisters Trust
Tableau
Ricard Foundation
Olwyn Foundation
JJ Charitable Trust
Hiscox
Barbet
Black Rock		 2021
£
1,022,101
1,615,396
69,760
969,556
1,024,673
173,578
4,875,064
2021
£
488,902
314,924
54,760
879,995
1,139,914
340,001
131,488
-
-
-
15,000
9,774
960
-
340,358
82,765
-
-
100,600
54,862
100,000
317,917
45,000
68,000
8,068
200,000
30,000
20,000
50,000
42,000
39,776
4,875,064		 2020
£
2,200,296
1,030,603
65,000
407,566
-
-
3,703,465
2020
£
291,837
314,922
15,000
74,995
1,376,763
336,245
108,558
16,999
660,530
181,545
50,000
106,071
-
70,000
-
-
30,000
70,000
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
3,703,465

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS - continued FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

6. RAISING DONATIONS AND LEGACIES

Unrestricted
funds		 Total Total
General 2021 2020
£ £ £
Employment costs 227,265 227,265 222,185
Production of resources 1,826 1,826 12,546
Premises and office costs 27,969 27,969 25,870
Training, conference and events 10,461 10,461 8,494
Other costs 52,206 52,206 51,383
Promotion and advertising - - 144
Consultancy 4,742 4,742 23,059
Direct Costs 324,469 324,469 343,681
Allocated support costs 31,986 31,986 28,604
356,455 356,455 372,285

Allocated Support Costs (note 10)

7. OTHER TRADING ACTIVITIES

OTHER TRADING ACTIVITIES
Purchases 2021
£
306,597		 2020
£
361,331
2021 2020
£ £
Membership 95,497 69,650
Publication - 8,585
Consultancy and Speaker Fees - 1,703
National Training Centre 209,682 232,074
National Conference - 45,660
Other Conference and Events - 228
Advertising and Merchandise 1,418 3,431
306,597 361,331

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS - continued FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

8. CHARITABLE ACTIVITIES COSTS

Grant
funding of
activities
Direct
(see note
Costs
9)
£
£
Change That Last
569,349
603,285
Direct Services
990,234
267,515
Campaigning
121,349
-
Training and support for Members
345,861
731,597
Other Activities
534,499
1,638
Covid related support
203,544
-
2,764,836
1,604,035
9.
GRANTS PAYABLE
Change That Last
Direct Services
Training and support for Members
Other Activities
The total grants paid to institutions during the year was as follows:
Safelives
Respect
Refuge
WGN
Rasacs
Welsh Women's Aid
Rise
Your Sanctuary
Wearside Women In Need
East Surrey Domestic Abuse Service
Women's Aid Integrated Service
Nottingham Women's Aid
My Sister Place
Boston Women's Aid
Northern Ireland Women's Aid
Scottish Women's Aid
Sahali
Humraz
Grants paid to institutions individually under £25,000
Roshni
Panahghar
Opoka
Anah project
Apna Haq
HARV
Coventry Haven Women's AId		 Support
costs (see
note 10)
£
-
-
-
-
479,328
-
479,328
2021
£
603,285
267,515
731,597
1,638
1,604,035
2021
£
593,299
10,000
127,613
69,845
45,044
-
-
-
25,000
-
-
-
29,559
-
-
-
-
-
463,313
39,962
37,000
36,150
36,000
36,000
30,000
25,250
1,604,035		 Totals
£
1,172,634
1,257,749
121,349
1,077,458
1,015,465
203,544
4,848,199
2020
£
1,370,092
233,877
-
-
1,603,969
2020
£
659,434
10,000
93,974
69,845
60,058
172,868
34,540
30,000
50,000
50,000
10,000
30,000
30,000
34,540
104,346
144,364
10,000
10,000
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
1,603,969

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS - continued FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

9. GRANTS PAYABLE - continued

The above is a list of the largest grants in aggregation to institutions (no grants were made to individuals):

In accordance with Section 37 of the Local Government Act 1989, £44,556 of the grant from London Councils of £314,922 was used in respect of the period 1st April 2020 to 31st March 2021. The grant has been used to fund Women's Aid management time for all strand co-ordination, contract monitoring and reporting. In addition, it has been used to fund the overseeing of the data collection project which includes collecting, analysing and reporting on the demand and use of refuges in London.

Grant Aid of £314,922 was received from London Councils for the year 2020/21 for the Pan-London domestic and sexual violence helplines and data collection project under Priority 2, Service area 2.3.

The following table illustrates how money was allocated across the partnership and that it has been used for the purposes outlined in the funding agreement. A sum of £140 was also brought forward from the year 2019/20.

Grant Grant Spent
Lead Partner A Women's Aid Federation of England £47,406 £44,556
Delivery Partner B Respect £10,000 £10,000
Delivery Partner C Refuge £127,613 £127,613
Delivery Partner D RASASC £60,058 £60,058
Delivery Partner E Womens & Girls Network £69,845 £69,845
£314,922 £312,072

The £140 brought forward from 2019/20 has not been spent. Women's Aid Federation of England underspent on travel (£1,350) and events (£1,500) in 2020/21 due to the coronavirus pandemic. The £140 brought forward from 2019/20 will be returned to London Councils. The travel and events underspend will be carried forward to year 5.

All costs across the partnership*:

Grant Grant Spent
Staff £234,791 £233,441
Beneficiary £2,470 £970
Other Direct Project £36,785 £36,785
Overheads £40,876 £40,876
£314,922 £312,072

*Does not include underspend of £140 brought forward from 2019/20.

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS - continued FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

10. SUPPORT COSTS

Staff Admin Other Total Total
costs costs support 2021 2020
costs
£ £ £ £ £
Charitable activities 226,963 205,173 47,192 479,328 424,056
Cost of generating donations
and legacies		 15,146 13,691 3,149 31,986 28,604
242,109 218,864 50,341 511,314 452,660

Basis of allocation

Support costs are apportioned across the main activates of the charity on the basis of total staff time spent on each of these during the year.

11. NET INCOME/(EXPENDITURE)

Net income/(expenditure) is stated after charging/(crediting):

2021 2020
£ £
Auditors' remuneration 19,358 15,054

12. TRUSTEES' REMUNERATION AND BENEFITS

There were no trustees' remuneration or other benefits for the year ended 31 March 2021 nor for the year ended 31 March 2020.

Trustees' expenses

During the year Trustees were reimbursed expenses of £592 (2020: £4,873). Trustees' expenses represents the reimbursement of travel costs and other budgeted expenses to 1 (2020 - 4) members relating to attendance at meetings of Trustees.

During the year £984 (2020: £935) was paid in respect of Trustees' indemnity insurance.

13. STAFF COSTS

STAFF COSTS
Wages and salaries
Social security costs
Other pension costs		 2021
£
2,032,578
188,012
131,598
2,352,188		 2020
£
2,221,832
205,882
148,488
2,576,202

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS - continued FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

13. STAFF COSTS - continued

The average monthly number of employees during the year was as follows:

Fundraising
Support
Charitable activities		 2021
6
10
57
73		 2020
5
8
81
94

The number of employees whose employee benefits (excluding employer pension costs) exceeded £60,000 was:

£70,001 - £80,000
£80,001 - £90,000
£90,001 - £100,000		 2021
-
1
1
2		 2020
2
-
-
2

The total employee benefits of the key management personnel of the Charity were £104,904 (2020: £158,128)

14. COMPARATIVES FOR THE STATEMENT OF FINANCIAL ACTIVITIES

INCOME AND ENDOWMENTS FROM
Donations and legacies
Charitable activities
Change That Last
Direct Services
Campaigning
Training and support for Members
Other trading activities
Investment income
Total
EXPENDITURE ON
Raising funds
Raising donations and legacies
Other trading activities
Charitable activities
Change That Last
Direct Services
Campaigning
Training and support for Members
Other Activities		 Unrestricted
funds
£
1,191,513
-
-
-
-
434,934
977
1,627,424
372,285
358,917
731,202
-
-
-
-
509,549		 Restricted
funds
£
128,487
2,200,296
1,030,603
65,000
407,566
24,144
-
3,856,096
-
2,414
2,414
2,389,974
980,502
70,827
408,408
147,102		 Total
funds
£
1,320,000
2,200,296
1,030,603
65,000
407,566
459,078
977
5,483,520
372,285
361,331
733,616
2,389,974
980,502
70,827
408,408
656,651

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS - continued FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

14. COMPARATIVES FOR THE STATEMENT OF FINANCIAL ACTIVITIES - continued COMPARATIVES FOR THE STATEMENT OF FINANCIAL ACTIVITIES - continued COMPARATIVES FOR THE STATEMENT OF FINANCIAL ACTIVITIES - continued
Unrestricted Restricted Total
funds funds funds
£ £ £
Total 1,240,751 3,999,227 5,239,978
NET INCOME/(EXPENDITURE) 386,673 (143,131) 243,542
Transfers between funds (15,278) 15,278 -
Net movement in funds 371,395 (127,853) 243,542
RECONCILIATION OF FUNDS
Total funds brought forward 338,839 872,828 1,211,667
TOTAL FUNDS CARRIED FORWARD 710,234 744,975 1,455,209
15. TANGIBLE FIXED ASSETS
Improvements
to
property
£
COST
At 1 April 2020 and 31 March 2021 10,878
DEPRECIATION
At 1 April 2020 and 31 March 2021 10,878
NET BOOK VALUE
At 31 March 2021 -
At 31 March 2020 -
16. DEBTORS: AMOUNTS FALLING DUE WITHIN ONE YEAR
2021 2020
£ £
Trade debtors 89,909 127,441
Other debtors 173,293 91,402
Accrued income 207,814 441,478
Prepayments 217,916 57,354
688,932 717,675

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS - continued FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

17. CREDITORS: AMOUNTS FALLING DUE WITHIN ONE YEAR

CREDITORS: AMOUNTS FALLING DUE WITHIN ONE YEAR
Trade creditors
Grant payable
Social security and other taxes
VAT
Other creditors
Deferred income
Accrued expenses		 2021
£
127,509
-
71,691
4,024
394
406,411
255,459
865,488		 2020
£
72,044
643,318
(296)
3,517
4,000
38,555
92,563
853,701

18. LEASING AGREEMENTS

Minimum lease payments under non-cancellable operating leases fall due as follows:

Within one year
Between one and five years
In more than five years		 2021
£
81,588
309,032
-
390,620		 2020
£
93,950
4,072
4,072
102,094

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS - continued FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

19. MOVEMENT IN FUNDS

Unrestricted funds
General fund
Designated Fund - Membership
development and sustainability
Designated Fund - Sector wide
initiatives
Designated Fund - Internal Investments
Restricted funds
Home Office
London Councils
Lloyds Bank Foundation for England
and Wales
Comic Relief
Other Small Grants
The National Lottery Community Fund
The City Bridge Trust
MHCLG
Avon Cosmetics Uk Ltd
Waltham Fores tCouncil
Department for Digital, Culture, Media
& Sport
Oak Foundation & Others
Legal Education Foundation
RTS & Membership
Big Potential Social Investment
People's Postcode Trust
Women's Aid Members Contribution to
Apprenticeship
Restricted donations
Kering
House of CB
Tesco
YSL
Black Rock
Barclays
Bank of America
Refinitiv
Ask Me Fundraising
Restricted Campaigns & Policy
Barbet
Bristol University Justice
Gamesys
Hiscox
JJ Charitable Trust
Olwyn Foundation
Ricard Foundation
Tableau
The Sisters Trust
World Gold Council
Love Respect (Rest)		 At 1.4.20
£
710,234
-
-
-
710,234
-
140
6,250
-
4,246
283,649
49,000
-
20,158
22,403
12,109
154,041
2,656
32,959
2,668
1,840
15,900
43,798
-
30,000
23,333
39,825
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
744,975		 Net
movement
in funds
£
3,280,602
-
-
-
3,280,602
3
28,565
(6,250)
11,003
-
(64,853)
(46,647)
13,504
66,842
(16,999)
(12,109)
(91,684)
(2,627)
19,637
-
-
(1,800)
434,934
26,869
-
(2,801)
(37,329)
39,776
96,974
53,099
54,862
23,578
2,252
42,000
9,519
275,204
50,000
20,000
2,575
200,000
8,068
62,333
43,640
(2,106)
1,300,032		 Transfers
between
funds
£
(2,276,989)
1,600,000
350,000
400,000
73,011
-
(25,716)
-
-
(4,246)
(20,000)
-
(13,504)
(2,610)
-
-
(18,333)
-
-
-
-
-
4,246
-
(30,000)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
37,152
(73,011)		 At
31.3.21
£
1,713,847
1,600,000
350,000
400,000
4,063,847
3
2,989
-
11,003
-
198,796
2,353
-
84,390
5,404
-
44,024
29
52,596
2,668
1,840
14,100
482,978
26,869
-
20,532
2,496
39,776
96,974
53,099
54,862
23,578
2,252
42,000
9,519
275,204
50,000
20,000
2,575
200,000
8,068
62,333
43,640
35,046
1,971,996

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS - continued FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

19.
MOVEMENT IN FUNDS - continued
TOTAL FUNDS
1,455,209
4,580,634
Net movement in funds, included in the above are as follows:		 - 6,035,843
Unrestricted funds
General fund
Restricted funds
Home Office
London Councils
Lloyds Bank Foundation for England
and Wales
Comic Relief
The National Lottery Community Fund
The City Bridge Trust
MHCLG
Avon Cosmetics Uk Ltd
Waltham Fores tCouncil
Department for Digital, Culture, Media
& Sport
Oak Foundation & Others
Legal Education Foundation
RTS & Membership
Women's Aid Members Contribution to
Apprenticeship
Restricted donations
Kering
Tesco
YSL
Black Rock
Barclays
Bank of America
Julia and Hans Rausing Trust
BLF
Refinitiv
Ask Me Fundraising
Restricted Campaigns & Policy
Barbet
Bristol University Justice
Gamesys
Hiscox
JJ Charitable Trust
Olwyn Foundation
Ricard Foundation
Tableau
The Sisters Trust
World Gold Council
Love Respect (Rest)
TOTAL FUNDS		 Incoming
resources
£
4,645,139
488,902
314,923
54,760
879,995
1,147,778
-
340,001
131,488
-
-
-
15,000
20,054
-
596,106
82,765
-
250
39,776
100,000
53,099
150,000
100,600
54,862
27,450
58,178
42,000
9,774
317,917
50,000
20,000
30,000
200,000
8,068
68,000
45,000
-
5,446,746
10,091,885		 Resources
expended
£
(1,364,537)
(488,899)
(286,358)
(61,010)
(868,992)
(1,212,631)
(46,647)
(326,497)
(64,646)
(16,999)
(12,109)
(91,684)
(17,627)
(417)
(1,800)
(161,172)
(55,896)
(2,801)
(37,579)
-
(3,026)
-
(150,000)
(100,600)
-
(3,872)
(55,926)
-
(255)
(42,713)
-
-
(27,425)
-
-
(5,667)
(1,360)
(2,106)
(4,146,714)
(5,511,251)		 Movement
in funds
£
3,280,602
3
28,565
(6,250)
11,003
(64,853)
(46,647)
13,504
66,842
(16,999)
(12,109)
(91,684)
(2,627)
19,637
(1,800)
434,934
26,869
(2,801)
(37,329)
39,776
96,974
53,099
-
-
54,862
23,578
2,252
42,000
9,519
275,204
50,000
20,000
2,575
200,000
8,068
62,333
43,640
(2,106)
1,300,032
4,580,634

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS - continued FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

19. MOVEMENT IN FUNDS - continued

Comparatives for movement in funds

Unrestricted funds
General fund
Restricted funds
Home Office
London Councils
Lloyds Bank Foundation for England
and Wales
Other Small Grants
The National Lottery Community Fund
The City Bridge Trust
Avon Cosmetics Uk Ltd
Waltham Fores tCouncil
The Sylvia Adams Charitable Trust
Other Activities
Department for Digital, Culture, Media
& Sport
Oak Foundation & Others
Department of Health
Legal Education Foundation
RTS & Membership
Big Potential Social Investment
People's Postcode Trust
Campaign: Two Child Tax Credit Limit
Policy
Women's Aid Members Contribution to
Apprenticeship
Restricted donations
House of CB
Business Development
Tesco
YSL
TOTAL FUNDS		 At 1.4.19
£
338,839
165,787
-
3,993
1,987
313,877
49,000
20,839
14,943
33,167
33,973
8,324
124,253
21,988
10,740
29,102
6,000
8,579
376
25,900
-
-
-
-
-
872,828
1,211,667		 Net
movement
in funds
£
386,673
(168,708)
140
2,257
2,259
(30,228)
-
(681)
7,460
(30,466)
(23,973)
3,785
6,475
(21,988)
(8,084)
3,857
(3,332)
(6,739)
(376)
-
43,798
30,000
(11,745)
23,333
39,825
(143,131)
243,542		 Transfers
between
funds
£
(15,278)
2,921
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
(2,701)
(10,000)
-
23,313
-
-
-
-
-
-
(10,000)
-
-
11,745
-
-
15,278
-		 At
31.3.20
£
710,234
-
140
6,250
4,246
283,649
49,000
20,158
22,403
-
-
12,109
154,041
-
2,656
32,959
2,668
1,840
-
15,900
43,798
30,000
-
23,333
39,825
744,975
1,455,209

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS - continued FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

19. MOVEMENT IN FUNDS - continued

Comparative net movement in funds, included in the above are as follows:

Unrestricted funds
General fund
Restricted funds
Home Office
London Councils
Lloyds Bank Foundation for England
and Wales
Comic Relief
Other Small Grants
The National Lottery Community Fund
MHCLG
Avon Cosmetics Uk Ltd
Waltham Fores tCouncil
The Sylvia Adams Charitable Trust
Other Activities
Department for Digital, Culture, Media
& Sport
Oak Foundation & Others
Department of Health
Legal Education Foundation
RTS & Membership
Big Potential Social Investment
People's Postcode Trust
Campaign: Two Child Tax Credit Limit
Policy
Restricted donations
House of CB
Business Development
Tesco
YSL
TOTAL FUNDS
Designated Funds		 Incoming
resources
£
1,627,424
291,837
314,922
15,000
74,995
39,766
1,376,763
177,065
108,558
16,999
-
-
660,530
184,050
-
50,000
178,777
-
-
-
196,834
30,000
-
70,000
70,000
3,856,096
5,483,520		 Resources
expended
£
(1,240,751)
(460,545)
(314,782)
(12,743)
(74,995)
(37,507)
(1,406,991)
(177,065)
(109,239)
(9,539)
(30,466)
(23,973)
(656,745)
(177,575)
(21,988)
(58,084)
(174,920)
(3,332)
(6,739)
(376)
(153,036)
-
(11,745)
(46,667)
(30,175)
(3,999,227)
(5,239,978)		 Movement
in funds
£
386,673
(168,708)
140
2,257
-
2,259
(30,228)
-
(681)
7,460
(30,466)
(23,973)
3,785
6,475
(21,988)
(8,084)
3,857
(3,332)
(6,739)
(376)
43,798
30,000
(11,745)
23,333
39,825
(143,131)
243,542
Fund
Description
Membership
Development
&
This money has been set aside to support members in the challenges
Sustainability
associated with local commissioning.
Sector
wide
This designated fund is for work across a number of key projects which will
initiatives
have sector wide impact
Internal
An internal investment pot for investment in our infrastructure that will
Investment
ensure the long term viability of the organisation

Restricted Funds

Further description of each material fund which includes the source of funding and nature of restriction:

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS - continued FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

19. MOVEMENT IN FUNDS - continued

Project Direct Services

Description

Funders

The Women's Aid digital direct services include Bank of America, our Live Chat Helpline, the Survivors' Forum and Barbet, Blackrock, our email support service. These services help Comic Relief, thousands of women every year. These services Various, Gamesys, ensure that women get the right response to London Councils, domestic abuse and can find support in the way Ricard Foundation, that best suits them. Our Live Chat Helpline is an Tesco, Julia & Hans online instant messenger service where women Rausing Trust can access emotional support and guidance from trained and experienced support workers. Our email service, operated by specialist support workers, offers guidance and advice to survivors who contact us in need of support. The Survivors' Forum provides a safe, anonymous environment for women affected by domestic violence to speak out about their experiences and seek help and support, and has dedicated moderators to provide professional support and advice

CYP YSL supported the Safer Futures project, which will enable us to relaunch our nationwide network of Schools Advocates, consisting of domestic abuse professionals who champion prevention work in their region and support schools to address domestic abuse. encourage widespread engagement with schools across England to improve education for children and young people about domestic violence. The project aims to ensure that healthy relationships education is delivered responsibly and effectively across the country.

YSL

Change That Lasts

Change That Lasts (CTL) is a strategic Home Office, The programme piloting our strengths and needs-led National Lottery approach within different settings with a range of Community Fund funding and operational partners. Projects include (formerly BLF), BLF funded pilots of CTL, Home office funding of Waltham 'Sooner The Better' and its 'Trusted Professional' ForestDCMS scheme, and piloting the 'Ask Me' scheme with Welsh Women's Aid funded by Comic Relief and the Home Office

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS - continued FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

19. MOVEMENT IN FUNDS - continued

Increasing The aim of this project is to increase our Research Kering research capacity team capacity, with additional hours for two members of staff. This will enable Women's Aid to produce more data and reports on Domestic Abuse in England and to ensure Women's Aid remains a leading authority on Domestic abuse, and continues to use evidence to support campaigns. A portion of this funding is also dedicated to updating 'The Power to Change' programme, the aim of the programme is to support survivors and their children in their journey of healing after experiencing domestic abuse. With this funding the team plan to expand and deepen the programme. We aim to address the gaps and weaknesses within the current version of the manual, in order to make it more suitable, better adapted and updated to the current climate in England. Apprenticeships Women's Aid are working with the Institute of People's postcode Apprenticeship's to develop an Apprenticeship for Domestic Abuse Sector. The Apprenticeship will cover all roles currently operating within our membership organisations. The Institute have accepted the proposal put forward and allocated WA a relationship manager. On Track On Track, our outcomes monitoring and case Avon Cosmetics, management is used by nearly 80 organisations to City Bridge Trust, facilitate their casework and evidence their impact. Kering Foundation The national data it provides is used to inform and support our campaigning and advocacy work on behalf of members and survivors. Translation Project The objective of this project is to ensure that our Barclays, World online resources are available to women for whom Gold Council English is not a first language, or who face other accessibility barriers in accessing the information that we provide. We would do this by translating the key areas of our website into the most commonly spoken languages in the UK, including videos for those women who cannot read their mother tongue, and in BSL, as well as auditing our resources to be more accessible, e.g. for those who use screen readers. As a result of this project, more women will be able to access the information and support that they need.

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS - continued FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

19. MOVEMENT IN FUNDS - continued MOVEMENT IN FUNDS - continued
Domestic violence This funding enables us to engage survivors in the Lloyds Foundation,
& abuse bill development
of
the
law,
using
the
Domestic		 Legal Education
Abuse Bill as a 'live study' of the law-making Fund
process, equipping and empowering survivors with
the confidence and opportunities to influence the
legislation. Thanks to continuation funding we can
ensure
survivors
continue
to
build
on
their
influence at this crucial time as well as expanding
the project by involving our member services to
support survivors in influencing legislation; and
develop our network of Campaign Champions to
better
support
them
and
enhance
their
campaigning impact around the law.
Mental Health The objective of this project is to develop a Gamesys
Campaign flagship new public policy campaign that will shape Foundation
debates
around
domestic
abuse
and
mental
health and use momentum of the Domestic Abuse
Bill to drive change forward. The campaign will run
for 3 years. This campaign will be: driven by the
priorities and voices of survivors; rooted in the
expertise and views of our members; and will not
mean that we speak for marginalised groups, but
will enable us to build partnerships to ensure the
voices and experiences of marginalised survivors
are central to the campaign. We will be building on
the lessons and learning of engaging a diverse
group of survivors as 'experts by experience' in
our Law in the Making project during 2019-20.
Training Portal The donation was made with specific reference to Hiscox, JJ
the current Covid-19 pandemic. It was decided to Charitable Trust,
use these funds towards the training portal so that Refinitiv
Women's Aid could continue to carry out training
online
during
the
Covid-19
restrictions
and
beyond.
Routes to Support The project provides a referral database of VAWG MHCLG, London
services
and
refuge
vacancies
to
national		 Councils
helplines and local services. It further provides a
public
service
directory
on the
Women's
Aid
website and the Goldbook Online directory which
is available at cost to other agencies
Love Respect For the Love Respect project we held consultation Avon Cosmetics,
with a group of young women to see what services House of CB
they felt they needed. The conclusion
of our		 corporate funding
learnings
has
led
to
the
development
of
an
interactive online advice hub, which also includes
an
instant
messaging
service.
This
exciting
service for girls aged 14-18 will raise awareness of
what an abusive relationship looks like, answer
their questions about relationships and signpost
them to specialist support if they are experiencing
domestic abuse.

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS - continued FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

19. MOVEMENT IN FUNDS - continued MOVEMENT IN FUNDS - continued
Covid support The COVID 19 pandemic has had far reaching Comic relief, NLCF
impacts on survivors and the specialist domestic /DCMS, Home
abuse services which support them. Emergency Office, Kering,
funding from Trusts and Statutory organisations Lloyds Banking
has enabled Women's
Aid to deliver effective		 Foundation
support
to the life-saving
national
network
of
services, and to reach many survivors who have
experienced escalating domestic abuse and harm.
WAFE services continued to be in extremely high
demand during the pandemic and as restrictions
have begun to ease. In order to try and meet this
demand we received support from trusts
and
statutory organisations to fund crucial staff roles
that are supporting survivors and services during
this
incredibly
busy
time.
We
also
received
counselling costs to support the health of our staff
who are in need of additional care due to an
increasing workload and exhaustion.
No woman turned The No Woman Turned Away (NWTA) project MHCLG
away provides dedicated support to women who face
barriers in accessing a refuge space. A team of
specialist
domestic
abuse practitioners
receive
referrals and we are continuing to conduct detailed
monitoring and analysis of survivors' experiences
alongside this.
Procurement & To provide support to domestic abuse services in Oak Foundation
Impact the United Kingdom so that they become more
Programme sustainable and their organisational and financial
stability are increased. This work involves working
alongside
member
organisations
to
provide
sustainability support, access to national quality
standards and procurement services.
Member tech. These
funds
were
allocated
to
our
smallest		 Olwyn Foundation,
needs members
to allow them to develop an online		 Tableau
presence. This will enable our smallest members
to create or update their websites and use them
for marketing and fundraising purposes. This work
is being centrally procured by the Membership
Team, and has been really well received by our
Band A members.
Tech vs. Abuse This project aims to redesign and update the Comic Relief
Women's Aid Survivors' Handbook, by conducting
user research with survivors to make it more
accessible, user-friendly and help women get the
information and support they need as easily as
possible.

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS - continued FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

19. MOVEMENT IN FUNDS - continued

Leadership We were awarded a donation towards the salary Sister's Trust costs of our Chief Executive for 3 years. As this is such a pivotal role in the domestic abuse sector it is crucial that our new Chief Executive is given time to develop and nurture relationships with funders, both statutory and trusts, as well as supporters, sister organisations, sector partners and government members. By the end of the 3 year funding period our new Chief Executive will have led the development and implementation of our new organisational strategy. Audience mapping Small amount of funding to be used for audience Big Potential Social mapping. Investment

Transfers between funds

The transfers between funds between 1st April 2020 and 31st March 2021 were as follows:

£ Description From fund To fund
25,716 To cover staff time that supported London Councils General fund
the project
20,000 To cover staff time that supported The National Lottery General fund
the project Community Fund
13,504 To cover staff time that supported MHCLG General fund
the project
4,542 To support the project General fund Avon Cosmetics
18,333 To cover staff time that supported Oak Foundation & General fund
the project Others
During the year a several projects had funding reallocated, these are noted below
£ Description From fund To fund
4,246 Reallocation of funding Other Small Grants Restricted
Donations
30,000 Reallocation of funding House of CB Love Respect
(Rest)
7,152 Reallocation of funding Avon Cosmetics Uk Love Respect
(Rest)

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WOMENS AID FEDERATION OF ENGLAND

NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS - continued FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

20. RELATED PARTY DISCLOSURES

Women's Aid worked with Refuge, the Rape and Sexual Abuse Support Centre, and the Women and Girls Network to deliver Domestic and Sexual Violence Helpline Services to London.

Five Trustees hold senior positions with member services where there is a small possibility of "Conflict of Interest" and to avoid this the Board ensures the Women's Aid Conflict of Interest Policy is followed at all times.

The Board of Trustees were drawn from member organisations running services to address violence against women and children. These organisations received a small honorarium in recognition of their support for he work of the Board of Trustees. Payments were made to the following organisations:

2021 2020
£ £
Harv Domestic Abuse 1,300 -
Cambridge Women's Aid 400 -
Staffordshire Women's Aid 400 -
IDAS 900 -
Staying Put - 750
Apna Haq 1,050 200
Rise 1,350 400
Solace Women's Aid - 450
Jewish Women's Aid 550 450
5,950 2,250

Reimbursement of expenses was made to the following organisations/individuals on behalf of Board Members:

Members:
2021 2020
£ £
Rise 592 -
IDAS - 2,807
Apna Haq - 1,497
Staffordshire Women's Aid - 105
Wearside Women In Need - 464
592 4,873

Sales relating to conference places, publications, training courses and job adverts on the charity website were made to the following organisations:

website were made to the following organisations:
2021 2020
£ £
Rise - 1,606
Staying Put - 992
Solace Women's Aid - 9,672
My Sister's Place - 1,957
Apna Haq 320 220
Jewish Women's Aid 620 1,480
IDAS 2,495 32,781
Staffordshire Women's Aid 5,900 660
Harv Domestic Abuse 440 -
Cambridge Women's Aid 5,240 -
15,015 49,369

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